CLINCHING THE DEAL – State negotiators (L-R) Peter Sennett, Richard Ahl, Rebecca Caudle look on as the Governor’s Office of Employee Relations Director Gary Johnson shakes hands with PEF President Ken Brynien after a tentative agreement is reached February 5. Also pictured are PEF Vice President Lou Matrazzo, Secretary-Treasurer Arlea Igoe and PEF Chief Negotiator Roger Scales.                                         Photo by Deborah A. Miles

Building on yesterday for better tomorrow

By KENNETH BRYNIEN
As you are aware, any union’s primary purpose is to improve the terms and conditions of employment of its members. For PEF members, this means our contracts, our job security and our benefits.

What many don’t realize is that almost everything we achieve in these areas is done by building on past gains, or working to minimize items and actions which are detrimental to our members.

There is probably no better illustration of this than our contract efforts. Our tentative PS&T agreement continues to build on the progress of past agreements. The tentative agreement continues our movement toward salary parity with the CSEA (Civil Service Employees Association) that began in the previous contract. We started out with a merit step for our members in grades 1-18, bringing our job rates for those grades up to those of CSEA’s. We continue this progress by bringing the job rates of our members in grades 19-25 to the same levels as CSEA’s and eliminating the merit step process.

We continued our efforts for our members working in high-cost areas of the state. In the previous contract we were limited to only minor increases in salary adjustments. We made this a focus of our efforts, built coalitions around the issue with other unions negotiating with the state and now have achieved the largest single increase in location pay since the program was established.

We were able to build on our progress on across-the-board raises, too. Many said when we achieved $800 added to base pay the last day of the previous contract, that we would be forced to accept a zero in the first year of this new contract. We made sure, before negotiations even began, the state knew that we would not take a zero in our contract. The results of these efforts: across-the-board raises of 3 percent, 3 percent, 3 percent and 4 percent.

As good as many think this contract is – and it is the best contract that we could achieve – there is always room for improvement. This contract is built on the progress we have made in past agreements. Many view our achievements as the end of a process, but I view this as another beginning, as we work to build on the progress we achieved in this current agreement.