RTM OKs 3-Year Contract for 28 Town Hall Workers

With little discussion and in a nearly unanimous 55-2 vote, a special session of the Representative Town Meeting approved a three-year contract Monday with the union representing 28 employees.

The RTM met in a special session primarily to approve the contract. Only 57 members of the body showed up for the meeting.

United Public Service Employees Union members will receive a 1.75 percent general wage increase for the fiscal year ending June 30, then a 2.25 percent increase in each of the following fiscal years.

The union agreed to increase its proportion of the cost for health insurance premiums from the current 14.5 percent to 15 percent starting on June 30. For the following two fiscal years, the rate would stay the same, then increase to 15.5 percent on June 30, 2014, the same day the current contract ends.

Compared to contracts in other towns

By comparison, according to Town Administrative Officer Karl Kilduff, Westport's Town Hall union members pay 13 percent of premiums, and for Greenwich Town Hall employees the share is 9 percent for the current fiscal year, ending June 30, and 10 percent for the next fiscal year.

Bruce Orr, chairman of the RTM Finance & Budget Committee, said his panel met, although with only five members present, there was no quorum. Nevertheless, those at the meeting endorsed approval of the contract, he said.

His committee thought the terms of the contract were "reasonable and in line" with similar union contracts in nearby towns, Orr said.

Dennis Maroney of District 3 was one of only two RTM members to vote against the contract. He said after the meeting that he believed there were added costs to the contract through higher prices for health insurance, and he thought the town should try harder to avoid those higher prices.

The employees covered by the contract mostly work in "administrative functions" in Town Hall, and they include staff in the Fire Marshal's Office and the Emergency Management Office, Orr said.

Already budgeted

Money to pay for the wage increases is already in contingency funds in the town budget for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, he said.

Orr said that in the previous, four-year contract, annual wage increases were 3.5 percent in the first year, then 3.25 percent in each of the following three years, ending on June 30, 2011. The union has been without a contract as wage negotiations dragged on for more than a year.

In a memorandum to the Board of Finance, which endorsed the contract earlier this month, Kilduff wrote that Greenwich recently approved a contract with a union representing similar workers that was higher, and the statewide average settlement for each of the years in question was also higher than the contract Darien negotiated.

Kilduff gave out these figures in his memo, showing general wage increases negotiated with municipal employees:

Among the other changes in the contract:

• The probationary period for new employees can be extended an extra three months after the three-month period provided for by the current contract. The town will have to state in writing why the period was extended.
• Employees who lose a mother, father, spouse or child receive three days of funeral leave in the current contract. The new contract will increase that to five.
• Employees on short-term disability may continue to take six months off from work, but now the employee can only take that much during any (rolling) 12-month period.
• When an employee is on long-term sick leave, the town will continue to pay the difference between an employee's Workers' Compensation payments and the employee's salary, but the new contract limits that full payment to the first nine months. After that, the payments start to decrease.

About the Workers' Compensation change, Kilduff wrote:

"This change presents an opportunity to achieve future saving in workers compensation by bolstering our commitment to risk management, controlling costs and reducing time lost which should close cases faster."