County government, union negotiate 3-year contract

Matt Cooper

Mar. 14, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- After more than nine months of negotiations, Lane County government's largest union has agreed to a three-year contract that raises wages, cuts health care benefits and removes the prospect of a looming strike, county officials said Friday.

The $3.5 million deal between the county and AFSCME Local 2831 includes raises of about 3 percent annually and other yearly increases for job experience.

But the county will save $500,000 over the life of the contract by moving the 590-member union to a less expensive health plan, officials said.

Despite a slumping economy and unemployment in Lane County standing at 11.9 percent, Lane County Commission Chairman Pete Sorenson called the contract "balanced" for employees and taxpayers, and said he would vote to approve the deal Wednesday.

"Although the national and state and local economy is very bad right now and people are losing their jobs, the federal, state and local dollars that we use to operate county government come with the requirement that we perform services," Sorenson said. "We need to have a work force that's competitive and we don't want to end up losing a lot of people during this downtime because we have cut their salaries."

The agreement, which covers last July 1 through June 2011, came after months of stalemate.

The sides remained at odds throughout 2008, and earlier this year the union declared an impasse in talks, forcing both sides to submit their final offers to the state.

The county said last month that it planned to impose parts of its final offer, but the threat of a retaliatory strike by the union dissolved with its recent vote of support for the contract.

Officials for AFSCME, which covers employees who perform general county services, said the union approved the contract "by a wide majority" Thursday but would not release the final tally.

Some in the union remain worried that members and retirees face increased costs for prescription drugs.

"We need to be clear that this contract is a sacrifice that Lane County employees willingly took for the benefit of our community," said Lori Green, union president and an office assistant in the public works department.

But regarding pay, the union will receive a series of annual raises under the new contract, and many of them also will receive yearly increases for job experience: An accounting analyst making $41,800 at the end of the previous contract will reach a minimum of $50,400 in 2011 -- a 20 percent increase -- thanks to raises for cost-of-living and annual increases for job experience.

By comparison, an experienced analyst at the top of the pay scale will move from $52,000 to a minimum of $56,200 -- an 8 percent increase -- thanks to the cost-of-living raises.

In information services, where there is a one-time 5 percent raise to reflect what the market pays, a less experienced analyst will move from $42,400 to a minimum of $53,700 -- an increase of more than 26 percent.

A top-scale analyst would move from $58,800 to a minimum of $66,800, an increase of more than 13 percent.

But the contract's cost is down 18 percent from the $4.3 million, three-year deal that preceded it.

That's due to the new contract's health care savings, smaller wage increases and a bargaining unit that is smaller due to reductions in the county work force, according to Human Resources Director Greta Utecht.

"We have fewer employees and the board was really looking for long-term savings, which (happened) in the health insurance plan," she said.

Health insurance costs have climbed at 10 percent annually for the past five years, the county said, but there will be savings in the union's move to the standard plan used by many other county employees.

Under the plan, there is no limit on what the union's members will pay for prescription drugs, which should encourage them to seek generic alternatives that are cheaper for them and the county, county labor negotiator Roland Hoskins said.

The county could save $1,000 per employee annually during the next six years, Hoskins added.

Jim Steiner, the union's chief negotiator, said the union is working to lower health care costs by pushing for the creation of statewide health insurance pools.

The pools would include employees from cities, counties and special districts from all over Oregon, allowing members to bargain for better options from insurance companies while at the same time keeping costs down for governments, Steiner said.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0061-33059786