Teamsters reject county wage concessions
by Brent Shrum, Kootenai Valley Record
June 11, 2009
Unionized employees of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office turned down a request from the county commissioners last week to postpone an agreed upon pay raise until economic times are better.
A three-year contract signed in May 2008 and covering the period of July 1, 2007, through June 30, 2010, provides for pay raises in the last two years. The agreement gives unionized deputies a 2.5 percent pay raise along with longevity raises and a cost of living adjustment. Other sheriff’s office employees – including dispatchers, detention officers and secretaries – didn’t get the 2.5 percent raise but do get the cost of living adjustment.
For the sworn deputies, the raise amounts about 7.3 percent, Commissioner John Konzen said.
"And since that contract was originally negotiated, the economy in this county has turned upside down," he added.
Because deputies’ salaries are linked by state law to the sheriff’s salary, and the sheriff’s salary is tied to all other county elected officials, the union contract obligates the county to provide raises to those officials as well. In addition, county policy has been to provide raises to all its employees whenever elected officials get a raise.
The commissioners asked members of the Teamsters union, which represents sheriff’s office employees, to consider putting the raise on hold for the time being and looking at the issue again in six months. A "trigger mechanism" tied to economic trends would have to be put in place to signal when the raise would take effect, Konzen said.
Several union members who attended the meeting with the commissioners took the request under consideration during a private session with Teamsters negotiator Dan Dugan. Upon returning, Dugan told the commissioners they had rejected the request.
"They considered this very hard, and we just can’t justify giving up what we fought so hard for," Dugan said.
Dugan noted that the union members previously worked for nine months without a contract and were nearing a strike before a contract was finally settled, and that the contract left non-sworn members out of the 2.5 percent raise.
Konzen called the decision "fair enough" but added that the raise won’t sit well with the public when so many people are out of work.
"I think we’re in unprecedented times, and this is an unprecedented request because of that," Konzen said.
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Editor’s Note: See the June 9, 2009 edition of the Kootenai Valley Record for the printed version of this story. The Kootenai Valley Record publishes once a week, now on Tuesday, in Libby, Montana. They are a locally owned community newspaper, located at 403 Mineral Avenue in Libby. For in-county and out-of-county subscription information, call 406-293-2424, or e-mail kvrecord@gmail.com.
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