Lunch break

Three-year pact reached with County employees

County council approved a three year deal last week with 102 of its inside and outside staff that will see them receive a two per cent annual hourly wage increase, as well as a onetime bump of 40 cents per hour.

In exchange, County employees, including road crews, maintenance workers, water operators and office staff, are giving up their paid lunch hour. It means an extra hour every day at no extra cost.

The elimination of paid lunches is worth about $235,000 to the municipality.

“It gives us the opportunity to open the office a half hour early and close a half hour later, improving customer service— at no extra cost to the municipality,” explained Chief Administrative Officer Merlin Dewing.

Over the term of the contract the union and Dewing have agreed to sit down to discuss the County’s short term disability plan—which the CAO describes as gold plated.

But Dewing emphasizes that this is a give and take process.

“The union knows upfront that some of this money is going to be reinvested into training programs. That will allow it to become more market competitive— not only with contractors, but also with the overall market.”

He points out that a large number of County staff is over 50 years of age and are expected to retire over the next 10 years. Further, the County struggles to recruit and retain younger employees. Improved training and career advancement opportunities are viewed as an essential part of enhancing the attractiveness of a career with the municipality.

Critics will see these as small steps toward addressing inflexible, cumbersome and antiquated workplace rules and practices, but Dewing counters that these are the first moves toward fixing problems created and ignored over many years.

“Our position with the union is that this is coming,” said Dewing. “Things are changing. We have chosen to do it incrementally. We could have done all of these things all at once—but that would have caused all kinds of grief. Our point to the union is that the reason we are contracting services out is because it is simply cheaper to do so.”

Dewing says he has worked through the County’s various jobs and compensation to show how much it costs to do the job in-house and how much it costs in the outside world.

“We are presenting them the facts—that will substantiate a greater willingness to give us more flexibility to reduce overtime, which will tilt the table back to enable us to do more work in-house. We have started down that path,” concluded Dewing.

Dewing suggests the thinking is beginning to change. He expects that, together with County employees and their union, they might soon work toward improving productivity and competitiveness.

“If we had pushed the issue today,” said Dewing, “we concluded we would have only saved about $75,000 a year—that wasn’t worth tempting a strike or lockout.”