4J, union leaders rehash past bargaining, propose improvements to the process

Leaders from Eugene School District 4J and its employee groups have been meeting since July to discuss a better way to bargain contracts — and they have some ideas.

The Workforce Negotiations Ad Hoc Committee, a new effort in 4J this year, has brought together three school board members with the leadership of four employee groups:

• Eugene Education Association, 4J’s teachers union;
• Oregon School Employees Association, its support staff union;
• Eugene Association of Substitute Teachers, its substitute union;
• and the Managers, Administrators, Professionals, and Supervisors employee group.

The discussions precede the Eugene Education Association’s next bargaining period, set to start in the spring. The union’s contract runs through the end of June.

Jamie Myers, president of the Eugene Education Association, said upcoming negotiations will test the effectiveness of the ad hoc committee and its suggestions.

“That’s where we’ll learn if this was a process with teeth or ‘a thing we did,’” she said in an interview with Lookout Eugene-Springfield. “I really hope this is a process that does improve negotiations.”

The open, but sometimes tense, discussions during the committee’s meetings have revolved around questions like who should be present at the bargaining table, the district’s use of a hired attorney in bargaining and how involved the school board should be in bargaining.

The unions have shown little interest in switching from bargaining that is open to the public and recorded, to other forms of bargaining, which sometimes happen behind closed doors.

The committee will make recommendations to the school board about how the district can improve bargaining at the board’s Dec. 2 meeting.

Complaints about attorneys, moments of disrespect 

In debriefing over past bargaining, union representatives had common themes. One was a shared distaste for the district’s hired labor attorney, who has served as the spokesperson for the district’s bargaining team for the past few years.

Myers, the teachers union president, and Dave Wines, the vice president, complained about what they called an overreliance on hired outside legal counsel. They said that made it hard for union representatives to speak directly with district administrators on the other side of the table.

The 4J district has contracted with CDR Labor Law for its most recent bargaining sessions involving Eugene Education Association, Oregon School Employees Association and Eugene Association of Substitute Teachers.

Attorney Chris Duckworth was the primary negotiator for the district during teachers union and classified staff union bargaining.

“We felt like — we still feel like — that is a huge drain of public funds, and an incentive, really. That person is being hired by the district and the longer negotiations go on, the more money that person makes for their firm,” Myers said.

The unions are without access to legal counsel during bargaining, but have access to attorneys during caucuses, which are small private meetings during bargaining sessions often used by the parties to review proposals presented during open session and formulate a response.

Lisa Jenkins-Easton, the 4J unit president of Oregon School Employees Association, said her union members disliked Duckworth’s style and tone.

“Our perspective is that the district paid for someone to insult its employees while their team looked away and allowed it to happen,” Jenkins-Easton said. “I remember looking across and trying to understand how the district team was OK with how we were spoken to, and many of them would not make eye contact, and they would look down.”

Administrators at 4J said they have contracted out the lead negotiator role in the past to save administrators’ time. Myers argued that the union does not have the luxury of contracting out this role and says it’s inequitable that the district has the funds to hire someone and the union doesn’t.

The district’s assistant superintendent, Brooke Wagner, and its director of human resources, Kate Marrone, mentioned their dislike of audience members waving signs and hissing at administrators during the public negotiating sessions.

“It goes back to keeping some humanity,” Marrone said. “That was my first experience in the district, was walking in and people making noises as we walked to the table. I went, ‘Oh, this is a thing? OK.’”

The managerial employee group’s main gripe with their past contract conversations (the group is not a union and does not bargain), was a lack of a schedule for meetings, which prolonged the conversations, they said.

More board involvement

Union leaders have repeatedly said they want board members, who offer direction to district bargaining teams, to be able to hear directly from union members.

Generally, school boards meet in executive sessions not open to the public when they huddle with district officials or attorneys about bargaining. Some school districts in Oregon have school board representation on district bargaining teams, but 4J’s current practice is for board members to attend bargaining meetings when they can and not be included in the private caucus meetings between bargaining.

Because the district’s bargaining team has direct access to the board, union representatives are wary that information regarding negotiations is framed from the district’s perspectives. They want opportunities to present their proposals to the board themselves.

The committee gathered information about how other districts of comparable size include board members in bargaining and will talk about options at the committee’s Nov. 20 meeting. The committee has also agreed to propose a standing workforce relations committee to the school board.

Lingering tension

Jenkins-Easton said Oregon School Employees Association’s last contract bargaining with the district, which ran from April to December 2025, eroded trust and created a rocky relationship, which persists.

In the Sept. 29 committee meeting, Marrone critiqued the union for not fully considering the financial impact of its proposals.

Sally Duerfeldt, benefits coordinator for Oregon School Employees Association, countered that, saying a more fair statement was that the union’s initial proposals were more than the district could afford.

“To say that we don’t know is insulting our intelligence and the work that we put into that,” Duerfeldt said.

At one point in the Sept. 29 meeting, Wines, the teachers union vice president, asked whether there were different “vibes” between each of the employee groups and the district.

An audience member wearing an Oregon School Employees Association T-shirt stood up and spoke.

“I’m sorry, it’s not about vibes at all, it’s about the fact that our process took a year,” the man said, referring to the drawn-out contract negotiations. “You guys spent a year f—ing us over. We’re the lowest-paid employees. Is any of this committee going to do better?”

Linda Smart, chair of the Eugene Association of Substitute Teachers, said over years of being on the teachers’ union bargaining team and then being a part of the substitutes’ union bargaining sessions this past year, she has seen differences in how employee groups are treated.

“EEA is given a much higher level of respect, and seen more as professional,” Smart said, of the main teachers union. “OSEA and EAST are treated as kind of lower.”

School board Vice Chair Maya Rabasa, acknowledged that the difference between the teachers union and support staff union bargainings were “night and day.”

At the end of the tense Sept. 29 meeting, Superintendent Miriam Mickelson praised the group.

“I don’t know of any school district that is attempting to have these conversations,” she said. “And for that, I am grateful and I am quite proud that we are the kind of district that can come to a place like this and just have the courage and willingness in our hearts to hear different perspectives.”