May 30, 2015
County OKs sheriff’s department contract
The Cortland County Legislature on Thursday unanimously approved a new contract with the county’s corrections officers, an agreement that will affect more than 40 employees in the Cortland County Sheriff’s Department and will cost the county about $50,000 more each year.
The Civil Service Employees Association ratified the contract on May 21 after four days of expedited negotiations with the county. The jobs covered by this contract include correction officers, correction corporal, correction sergeant, correction lieutenant, and correction captain.
The agreed upon contract is effective Jan. 1, 2015, to Dec. 31, 2019.
Under the agreement, there will be a 1.5 percent increase in salaries for 2015 to 2018 and then a 1.75 percent increase in 2019.
Annette Barber, director of the personnel department, said Friday morning that one of the biggest changes made to the wording of the contract involves language added to cut down on the number of allowable absentee days. This is to avoid inefficient operations at the jail.
Barber said the contract encourages people to come to work and to take sick days only when needed. An abuse of sick days is problematic because employees may have to take double shifts to cover the absences, prompting overtime pay.
According to the new contract, if employees are out seven times without any doctor’s excuse, they get a counseling memo, eight days out, they are reprimanded, nine days there is a three-day suspension and 10 days absent carries a 10-day suspension.
The union board members first voted against an initial tentative proposed agreement that had compensatory time being increased from 40 hours to 80 hours yearly but carried some minor issues with the sick leave language.
Will Streeter, CSEA’s labor relations specialist and chief negotiator of the contract said Friday afternoon that having the contract extend for five years rather than four as the previous one did, makes up for employees’ havingcompensatory time taken away.
“I think the end result ... was a very little change to the financial impact other than the additional year,” Streeter said.
Barber hopes that removing compensatory time will curb overtime costs to the county.
“In the jail you have mandated posts and you have to cover them,” Barber said. “It’s just one more type of time off that you have to cover and you cover it with overtime sometimes.”
Because the county is taking away compensatory time, the contract compensates a little bit with an increase in vacation days, adding an additional three days given over 25 years.
County Attorney Karen Howe said Thursday night after session she thinks it is a good contract for the county. Howe declined to give a reason.
Legislator George Wagner (R-Marathon and Lapeer) said the biggest advantage of the contract is that it eliminates compensatory time for employees because that will also help reduce overtime pay, which also reduces costs to the county.
“Comp (compensatory) time has been a thorn in the sheriff’s side trying to plan shifts,” said Wagner, who helped with the contract negotiations. “The elimination of this is going to be so much better for the sheriff.”
Wagner added it would also help the county plan the budget because compensatory time always varies and it is hard to plan on different numbers that come in from the sheriff’s department.
“I think we came (out) with a fair deal for both sides,” he said.
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