Union Representatives

After an unprecedented 3 1/2 -hour meeting, union representatives from all of Carroll County's public schools decided last night to delay voting on whether to join five of the schools where teachers - in a work-to-rule action - are boycotting after-school activities for which they are not paid. Representatives from the Carroll County Education Association asked their Crisis Committee - formed several months ago after contract talks with the school board broke down - to define what "working to rule" would mean, union leaders said last night.

Dozens of principals and assistant principals protested to the Baltimore school board last night - albeit silently - about newly hired "academic coaches" in their schools, some of whom are earning higher salaries than they are. None of the principals spoke publicly, but they attended the meeting to support their union representative, Sheila Kolman, who called the pay issue "demoralizing" and "alarming." It doesn't make sense, she said, that some of the coaches - who do not teach, but rather provide support and training to teachers - are making more in their 11-month positions than principals and assistants are making in a year.

A day after more than 100 teachers crowded the Carroll school board meeting in a show of disappointment and anger over their tentative contract agreement, school board President Susan W. Krebs shot back yesterday, saying it was too late for them to voice their opinions. Krebs said the contract offer was "more than fair." "To have all those people come [Wednesday] night after we have a signed tentative agreement amounts to bargaining in bad faith," she said yesterday. Krebs compared the teachers who showed up at the school board meeting to "a spoiled kid who wants both pieces of candy, can't have both and whines about it."

Frustrated that contract negotiations between Annapolis firefighters and the city have broken off, representatives from the firefighters union have begun courting city council members. Some council members attended a briefing last night by the union, which is seeking a shorter workweek that city officials have said they cannot afford. Mayor Ellen O. Moyer objected to the union's overtures with council members, saying the firefighters' representatives were engaging in "bad faith" negotiations by attempting to go around the city's designated negotiators.

City officials remained tight-lipped yesterday about the recommended dismissal of eight public works employees and allegations that city materials were missing.Officials of the Water and Wastewater Division of Local 44 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said yesterday that they are awaiting details regarding the recommendations to fire the workers, some of whom were supervisors."We want the charges," said Kelis Stewart, Local 44 labor representative for two of the removed workers.

Anne Arundel's teachers have sent their union representatives a strong message in favor of ratifying a contract that calls for a raise -- but not until early next year.By 4 p.m. yesterday, union officials had counted the ballots in a straw vote taken early last week at 96 work sites. They reported that 91 percent were in favor of the contract.John R. Kurpjuweit, president of the Teachers Association of Anne Arundel County, said the vote reflected a belief by the membership that union negotiators "got the most they could get under this contract."

Anne Arundel's teachers union has reached a tentative agreement with the county school board on a contract offering its members a complicated 2.5 percent "midyear raise."The figures in the one-year contract's raises were based on a new 90-step scale proposed by the school board, and their delayed implementation would result in salary increases of more than 2.5 percent, union President John R. Kurpjuweit said.Even so, he said, pay will not catch up with the increases in the cost of living since the county's approximately 4,000 teachers last received a contract with a 4 percent boost at the start of the 1994-1995 school year.

Unionized police officers will vote today on a three-yearcontract that would trim 15 positions from the police force -- but county and police officials say there will be no loss of police coverage because a new schedule will put officers on the road for more hours per shift.Though police officials refuse to comment on the contract until after the vote, county and police union representatives expect the contract to be ratified.County and union representatives agreed to propose a three-year contract because both sides had agreed last year on many issues, including pay increases, specialty payments, overtime, improved equipment and life insurance.

THERE ARE many promising ways to "change the culture" in Baltimore City's troubled public school system. Appointing the head of the teachers' union to the school board is not among them.In announcing his plan to appoint Irene B. Dandridge to the board, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke referred to precedents in which corporations had appointed union representatives to their boards. But this is a very different proposition. Corporate boards do not set day-to-day policy or negotiate contracts. The school board is intimately involved in all these activities.