A tentative collective bargaining agreement reached between the town and Department of Public Works union representatives last week was unanimously approved by the Select Board in executive session after its March 1 meeting. If ratified by the union, the modifications to the existing contract will pertain to the three-year period between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2023. Employees who are still with the DPW when the contract is approved will receive back pay for the increases specified in the first 20 months of the new contract.
The agreement represents nearly two years of negotiations. Town Administrator Tim Bragan told the Press the biggest sticking point was the increase in employee contributions for health insurance, a measure the Select Board voted on in 2020 when the pandemic generated concerns about a shortfall in state aid. Employees must now contribute 30% of insurance costs, compared to the old rate of 25% for most workers and 20% for those who had worked for the town a long time. The new DPW contract leaves the old contribution rate in place for the first year of the contract, raises the rate by 5% the second year, and ends up at the 30% rate for everyone by the final year of the contract.
While the union may have lost the battle over health insurance contributions, it won the war to increase the low starting wages of truck drivers, which could help ease the DPW’s current hiring difficulties. Effective July 1, 2022, the truck driver-laborer position will be split into two different positions—truck drivers with a commercial driver’s license and laborers with no license required. On that same date, the starting wage for truck drivers will increase from $20.29 to $23 an hour, the rate DPW union representatives had been asking for based on what nearby towns are paying.
All other public works employees will also receive a pay increase in the third year of the contract, thanks to a modification to the 10-step wage table. Starting wages (Step1) will be set to the wages currently specified for the second step; the second step’s wage will be increased to the current wage for the third step, and so on, resulting in either a 2% or 3% increase to every employee’s hourly rate. .
In addition, workers will retroactively receive a 3% cost-of-living adjustment for both the first and second years of the contract. Bragan said there is no cost-of-living adjustment for year three in the contract because the adjustment to the wage table will provide that increase. For workers who have been with the town longer than 10 years, an 11th step was added in year two of the contract. That will provide one more pay increase for those employees before they move to cost-of-living increases only.
Union representative Nick Ammesmaki told the Press he’s not happy with the deal, mainly because of the health insurance issue. “We were up against a wall,” he said. After the town’s last proposal, Ammesmaki said the union submitted a counterproposal, but the town wouldn’t accept it, instead giving the union 24 hours to sign the tentative agreement. Had the union not signed, the town would have moved negotiations into the fact-finding phase, where both parties submit evidence supporting their side to a neutral third party. Ammesmaki said there was a chance they’d end up with a worse deal after fact-finding, so they signed the agreement.
Bragan said the pandemic made the negotiation process more difficult, because there were very few face-to-face meetings where differences could have been more easily ironed out. He added that it took longer because back-and-forth communications between the town’s attorney and the union representative were “not swift.” Should the union choose to not ratify the contract, negotiations will move to fact-finding.
