BY ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporters [email protected] June 14, 2012 12:04PM

Updated: June 14, 2012 12:50PM
Chicago Public School officials and the system’s second largest union announced Thursday they had reached a contract that will give 5,500 custodians and other workers two percent raises for each of the next three years and saves the jobs of thousands of them.
The contract also gives the board an escape hatch, allowing the district to cancel a raise in an upcoming year if it doesn’t have the money to pay for it.
The agreement with Service Employees International Union Local 73 announced Thursday was ratified by 60 percent of its members, union vice president Taalib-Din Ziyad said.
The union represents 5,500 custodians, child welfare attendants, watchmen, special education classroom assistants, security officers, school bus aides and other CPS employees.
Ziyad said the union’s prime concerns were wages and job security. He said the contract saved 3,600 jobs of custodians and special education aides who could have been phased out of their jobs, apparently in an attempt to cut costs as the district grapples with a $600-$700 million deficit.
“We were far apart when we first sat down to the table with SEIU Local 73,” said schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard. “But we worked through the process and found when you keep lines of communication open and continue negotiating, agreement is possible.”
Niether side could immediately provide the cost of the new SEIU contract. The deal also gives child welfare attendants financial help in advancing their career, provides three-day training to all security personnel and changes the current sick-day policy.
The contract is the second that CPS has closed with unions. Five additional contracts are under negotiation, including one with the Chicago Teachers Union, the district’s largest bargaining unit. Last week, nearly 90 percent of CTU members voted to authorize a strike, if necessary, if negotiations break down.
The escape hatch in the SEIU is similar to one in the CTU contract that the Board of Education used to cancel a scheduled 4 percent pay hike for teachers during the school year that ends this week. That measure helped fuel anger over the board’s initial offer to the teachers.
However, Brizard insisted Thursday that “talks have not broken down” with the teachers and he said that “people are working very hard” to reach a compromise.