Rockville Centre board OKs six-year local unioncontract

After more than a year and a half of negotiations, the village has agreed on a new contract with the local chapter of the Civil Service Employees Association that will reduce starting salaries by 5 percent but will provide four across-the-board 2 percent salary increases by 2016.

CSEA members have been working without a contract since June 1, 2010, and the six-year agreement would cover the period from that date to May 31, 2016.

Members of the CSEA include village employees that are non-police officers and non-managers working in areas such as sanitation and as clerks and secretaries.

According to Village Comptroller Michael Schussheim, for the next three years of the contract, which was approved at a Board of Trustees meeting on April 3, salary increases will not take effect, as they have in the past, each June 1, the first day of the new fiscal year. Instead, from 2012 to 2014 there will be a freeze on salary increases until Dec. 1 of each year. The final salary increase, also 2 percent, will take effect on June 1, 2015. There will be no additional payout to employees for the retroactive years of the contract.

Schussheim explained that the reduced starting salaries, for any employee hired on or after June 1, 2012, add another “step” for each job title. The money the village will save through the lower starting salaries and the salary freezes, Schussheim said, will help offset increasing costs of employees’ health care premiums.

“We’re projecting that Empire Plan will raise their premiums by 7 percent, in the vicinity of $20,000 for any employee with family coverage,” Schussheim said. “We think that the step savings and the half year will save the village approximately $70,000.”

Earlier in the meeting, former Trustee David Krasula asked Schussheim how the village expected to address the rising costs of health care and retirement funding for government employees. “While we don’t directly have a change in contribution to health insurance,” Schussheim said, “the savings is a recognition of the higher costs of insurance.”