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Nashua custodians could really clean up

By Staff | Sep 27, 2013

Now that the Nashua Board of Education has turned down a grievance filed by the school district’s custodians’ union over volunteers being allowed to paint classrooms, perhaps the time is right for union members to do a little reconstruction work – on the union’s image.

The grievance filed by Local 365 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees claimed that the district violated the union contract by allowing more than 100 volunteers to come into schools for the past four years and paint murals, hallways and otherwise spruce up school buildings as part of Fidelity’s Transformation Day.

The grievance was initially rejected by Superintendent Mark Conrad, who said the union waited too long – four years – to file it.

The union appealed to the BOE, which upheld Conrad’s decision on Monday night.

Listening to some of the comments from that meeting, one gets the impression that the grievance has taken a toll in district schools.

“Several teachers called me, telling me morale is down because of this,” board member Sandra Ziehm said. “The truth is, if volunteers didn’t do this, it wouldn’t get done at all because we don’t have the money for it.”

So it’s not like the volunteers were taking food out of the mouths of the union members and their families. The work done by the volunteers wasn’t going to be done by the union even if the volunteers had stayed home.

In fact, you could argue that the volunteers were indirectly putting money into the pockets of the custodians by helping those in the community feel more connected to the schools, increasing the likelihood that – when the time comes – they would support school budgets and union contracts.

We also were struck by the union argument that the volunteers were tantamount to subcontractors. Coming to that conclusion requires an exercise in logical contortionism that would challenge even the most skilled gymnast.

“I have to say there is a strong difference between subcontractors and volunteers,” board member Kimberly Meuse said.

The union did have two supporters on the board, including David Murotake, who said the union was within its rights to bring the grievance, even though it “may make the union look a little bad by going against what appears to be good intentions.”

Actually, that’s probably understating things just a bit. As we said in this space last month, the union comes off looking petty and small-minded by targeting a group of well-intentioned people who are just trying to do some good.

The union can still file an appeal, but we have what we believe is a better idea.

We think it’s time for union members to one-up those rascals at Fidelity and do some serious image rehabilitation in the process.

Our suggestion: The next time there’s a volunteer day, members of Local 365 should show up in force. That’s right, we’re suggesting union members turn out as volunteers. Take the ol’ “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” adage to the next level and team up with the Fidelity army.

It would make the individual custodians look like the benevolent souls they probably are, take some of the edge off any residual community resentment that the case has engendered and, well, it would represent an enormous goodwill gesture by showing the people who fund their salaries that it’s not always about the money.

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