Community Corner

Financial Operations Manager Job Posting Complies With Labor Board

The city's search for a Board of Ed manager of financial operations continues Mayor Drew's efforts to ease the discord between the city and school leaders he inherited from the prior administration.

 

The city’s open position for the school board is entirely separate from the position held by Nancy Haynes, according to Board of Education Chair Gene Nocera.

Both are full-time jobs. The city posted the vacancy, according to a Feb. 22 article in the Hartford Courant, after “the state Board of Labor Relations ruled in August that the city violated state statutes when the school district hired a ‘business manager’ instead of a ‘manager of financial operations’ in 2009."

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"It was out of the grievance that the union filed and the Labor Board decided in their favor that the original position needed to be reposted since some of the work had gone to someone outside the union," Nocera said.

"We’ve come into compliance with the Teamsters contract that the state labor board determined had been previously violated,” Drew said. “Part of that work that was assigned to Nancy Haynes is going back to the Teamsters.”

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As business manager, Haynes will be relieved of the portion of duties that must be done by a unionized manager of financial operations when the MFO is hired, Nocera confirmed.

The vacancy announcement (see attached pdf) reads: "The purpose of this position is the daily coordination of the Middletown Board of Education Business Office and to oversee the Board of Education expenditures district-wide; assists in the development of the Board of Education’s annual budget; and monitors all state and federal grants for the Board of Education."

The position pays $24.73 to $36.60 per hour ($51,438.40 to $76,128.00 annually) and requires 40 hours of work per week. The application deadline was Feb. 23.

In November, then mayor-elect Drew said one of his top priorities after he’s sworn in will be to try and end the .

At a Dec. 28 press conference, , County and Municipal Employees Local 466 announced the lawsuit stemming from the hiring of a non-union employee for a unionized central office position had been dropped.

On Aug. 16, the state’s Board of Labor Relations ordered the Board of Ed to reinstate a unionized central office position that the board has refused to fill since 2008.

The board determined in its decision that the school board, acting as an agent of the city, sidestepped the union and city charter when it transferred the work from the unionized job manager of financial operation to a nonunion position it created in 2008 called the school business manager.

The school board had argued that it had the right to create the nonunion business manager position in lieu of the unionized MFO post, but the labor board soundly rejected that argument, saying that the duties of both jobs remained essentially the same; overseeing the school budget and supervising business office staff.

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