Schaumburg approves 4-year contract with support staff
Schaumburg trustees Tuesday approved a new four-year contract with the village's clerical and support-staff union - 16 months after the expiration of its previous contract - estimated to add about $650,000 more to personnel costs over its length.
The financial impact of the contract can't be pinpointed precisely because annual raises for the approximately 150 members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 1919 are also merit-based, Village Manager Brian Townsend said.
But within the pay ranges specified for each position, the maximum pay has been increased by 2 percent for all four years while the minimum pay has been increased 1 percent for the first two years and 2 percent for the last two.
The contract and pay raises are retroactive to May 1, 2017.
One of the other top priorities for the union was the ability to use sick time to look after ill family members, including children. Local 1919 President Debbie Diamond said the union members were satisfied with that provision.
"Yes, we made some gains," she added. "We did get some language on that."
The length of negotiations and the amount of public acrimony - with about 50 employees attending the village board meeting in late June to complain about the lack of progress - was unusual for recent years in Schaumburg.
But Local 1919 is a relatively young union, and this is only its second contract. Diamond said there probably were more long-term issues to work out than with some of the village's other unions, and she thinks the recent talks may have enabled smoother negotiations in the future.
A federal mediator began to take part in the negotiations in the late summer. Though Townsend hesitated to call the mediator's role essential to the contract reached, he did say there was likely a benefit to the communication between both parties. "We were always committed to trying to reach a fair deal with the union," he said.