union landscaping ordeal

Union battles like this sure make us reporters happy. (Unfortunately, I can’t find a link for this story anywhere online, but this story ran in the Cleveland newspaper last Thursday. The reporter was Rena A. Koontz, to give credit where it’s due.)
HEADLINE: Volunteer landscaping prompts union protest
Brooklyn, Ohio — A good deed meant to honor a dead second-grader has turned into a fight over whether school employees were cheated out of landscaping work.
Two custodians, whose duties include landscaping, have filed a grievance with the Brooklyn school district claiming they should be paid for landscaping work that a local company donated, even though it had no impact on their work hours.
Mark Hennings and Doug Scott want $37 an hour, the time-and-one-half rate, for the two weekends that volunteers, including high school seniors fulfilling community service requirements, spent sprucing up the grounds of Brooklyn High School and Roadoan Elementary School. The project honored Matthew Barrick, 8, who died Feb. 14 from a brain aneurysm. Funeral services were private, so Roadoan Principal Margaret Lennard and staff members decided to have a ceremony and plant a tree at the school to honor Matthew.
The idea snowballed. Local landscapers Jim and Tara Beale offered their help, donating $700 worth of materials. Semins’ Green House, Home Depot, Nations’ Rent and other companies and residents also donated materials, totaling $3,000.
At the ceremony, held two weeks ago, students sang songs and wrote letters to Matthew. They also raised money to help Matthew’s mother pay medical bills.
Then, a few days later, the custodians filed their grievance.
Tempers flared at Tuesday’s school board meeting when the grievance was discussed.
Gretchen Derethik, the high school principal, choked back tears as she defended the students who earned their community service hours in Matthew’s honor.
“The kids are taking pride in their school and our differences are pulling the kids right into the middle of our problems,” Derethik said. “Volunteerism is being criticized. This needs to stop. All we do is fight over nothing.”
Board members and some audience members stood and applauded.
Hennings angrily insisted that the project violated the union contract. Union members applauded him.
(Update: Thanks to commenter Stacy, here’s a link to the story, with an “amplification” featuring further union comments. [For those who don’t know, an “amplification” is a newspaper’s way of saying, “We didn’t get anything wrong, but powerful people are complaining about our story, so here’s a little something to get them off our backs.”] The comments don’t seem particularly exculpatory to me.
One final note: the Newhouse-owned newspapers, like the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, all have the ugliest, least useful web sites imaginable. The New Orleans and Portland papers are both excellent in print, but their web sites are awful.)