FOR YEARS, employees of the Skagit County Transit Union (local 176-T) felt management was favoring non-represented workers at their expense. But now they have ended up winners with the largest contract settlement in Council 2 in at least the past 15 years.
“This is a major victory,” says Bill Keenan, Council 2 director of organizing. “It shows that a team effort, along with persistence and pressure, can pay off in the end.
“Much of the credit in this case must go to Vinnie O’Connor, the Bellingham-based staff representative who led his team into this great settlement.”
The workers will receive the equivalent of 6, 5.5 and 5.5 percent increases in income over the next three years. Of this, 3 percent represents a salary increase in the first year and 2.5 percent for each additional year as a result of a survey, and 3 percent annual cost-of-living increases.
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In addition, medical benefits remain the same and a floating holiday has been introduced.
The contract was approved by a margin of 31 to 1.
“A member came up to me after the vote,” says O’Connor. “He said he never had been a big supporter of unions, but anybody who could get him a raise of more than 5 percent is a good union. I told him to thank his union president Mike Barrett and the other members of the bargaining team, who worked on his behalf.”
The negotiations were boosted by an unfair labor practice charge that Council 2 filed against the Transit Authority during the negotiations. The charge came against the background of a trend by management to treat non-represented employees different than the bus drivers and para-transit drivers, giving them better benefits than those that the union members had received in the contracts they had bargained.
As a result, Council 2 had earlier negotiated a “me, too” clause. The clause stipulated that they also would receive income or medical benefits offered to other workers should those terms be better than those they had received. The clause expired a year before the expiration of the Council 2 members’ contract.
“About a day after the clause expired, non-represented employees received huge pay increases, ranging from 2 percent to as high as 21 percent,” Keenan says.
Their action prompted the union to file an unfair labor practice charge. The basis was anti-union animus.
In the charge, Council 2 pointed out the disparaging treatment its members had received over a period of several years. The charge was dropped in the wake of the contract settlement.
O’Connor adds that relationships with management have improved since the settlement. “When I first got here, I could not talk to the employer,” he adds. “By getting the staff working together at the table we now have a good working relationship with management.”
