Wasilla City Council approves union contract

WASILLA — The Wasilla City Council Monday unanimously approved an agreement between the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 302 and 17 public works employees now represented by the union.

The representation is the first in Wasilla’s city history.

Local 302 will represent public works employees typically out in the field, such as road service workers, water and sewer utility workers, and buildings and parks employees, among others, said Public Works Director Archie Giddings.

The contract is for a three-year term, which is typical of union contracts with municipalities. In the contract, pay scale for the next three years is defined, Giddings said. He added health and retirement benefits will remain the same for the time being.

Giddings said he was very pleased with the union negotiations.

“It worked out nicely, I think,” Giddings said.

Local 302 had its first meeting with the city Tuesday to discuss the implementation of the contract, which went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, said Jared Hamlin, Local 302’s Business Relations director.

“It’s been a pretty smooth transition because Archie Giddings was part of the negotiating team for the city,” Hamlin said.

In one major change under the contract, public works employees will be paid for their on-call time, something that hasn’t occurred in the past, Hamlin said.

Many employees in the department are on-call during certain weeks after their normal daily hours are over. Previous to the union contract, on-call workers were not paid to sit at home in case they were needed on a job. Now, workers will be paid two extra hours per day during the days they are on-call for the city.

Hamlin said the change should make waster water treatment employees particularly happy because someone from the division must be on-call at all times. Because of that, each waste water employee works 10 weeks of on-call time during the year.

“We’re not trying to be ridiculous,” Hamlin said. “We’re trying to do things that are fair.”

Hamlin also said Wasilla will benefit from Local 302 because the union has the ability to streamline certain hiring for the city. For instance, if the city is looking for someone to run a piece of construction equipment officials could look toward Local 302’s hiring hall with more than 650 qualified people ready to work immediately, Hamlin said.

“They are going to have a tremendous cost savings,” Hamlin said.

That’s just one part of the union contract that councilman Steve Menard said he likes. Besides the potential monetary savings for the city, Menard said he’s glad the workers are happy.

“A happy worker is a productive worker,” Menard said.

He added he was pleasantly surprised at the speed and relative smoothness of negotiations.

“Everyone came to the table and it was pretty much ‘we’re looking for these marks’ and they said ‘yep, we’re looking for the exact same thing’ and we said fantastic,” Menard said.

The city still has two more negotiations to tackle this year with unions potentially representing employees at the Wasilla Multi-Use Sports Complex and the city’s police department.

Menard said he hopes those negotiations go as smoothly as the public works employees’ did.

“This will certainly set a precedent for how smooth it should go,” Menard said about the recent contract.

Contact Michael Rovito at michael.rovito@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.