Outstanding job on snow removal earns workers unusual reward

HERE'S ONE for the record books: In late January, managers in Snohomish County served a free breakfast to 160 road maintenance employees and support staff.

They were saying “thank you” to the workers, most of them members of Council 2, for the outstanding job they performed in handling the impact of a series of snow storms followed by flooding that struck the county — and the rest of the Puget Sound area — in late December and early January.

“As far as I know, something like this breakfast has never happened before,” says Roger Moller, president of Local 109, of which most of the employees at the breakfast are members. “I have worked here for 18 years and I have never had breakfast served to me by managers before.

“It was a fabulous breakfast. More than anybody could ever want to eat. We had everything — scrambled eggs, pancakes, French toast, sausages, muffins, five or six different types of fruit juice. You name it.

“The managers prepared all the food and served all of it. All we did was go through the line and eat. It was so filling we all wanted to take a nap afterward.”

The reason the managers were willing to reward the employees in this way was that the road maintenance crews, fleet management and support staff had worked 16 days of 12-on and 12-off shifts, including working on Christmas Day.

They sanded roads, cleared snow and ice, cut and moved downed trees and ensured people could move around on all the major arterials as well as many side roads.

It seemed that just as they had got on top of the impact of one storm, another moved in and they had to start all over again.

“But it was not over even when the snow stopped,” adds Moller. “Once we had dealt with the snow storms, we had to deal with flooding.”

Moller points out, too, that they ran their equipment for 24 hours a day yet had no failures. The performance was evidence of the great work that the mechanics perform in maintaining the equipment, he says.

During the breakfast, Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon told the workers how much he appreciated the great job they had done.

Even though people in Seattle and King County were having trouble negotiating their roads, he was able to move around freely throughout Snohomish County, Reardon said.

And he had received no complaints from the public.

The Local members received an additional recognition for the hard work they had performed under difficult circumstances, this one financial. Although the Local 109 contract with the county provides for up to 10 hours of holiday pay, many of the workers had spent 12 hours working on a holiday, Moller explains.

“I made overtures to my superiors, pointing out that it is only reasonable that if we are on duty for 12 hours we should receive 12 hours of holiday pay. It went all the way to Reardon’s office. He said: Absolutely. We were sacrificing our time and we deserved 12 hours of holiday pay for Christmas. And, he added: ‘Merry Christmas.’

“He signed an agreement, pointing out that it was a special agreement for the particular circumstances and was not precedent-setting.

“Everybody was happy with that.”