Clarkstown’s approximately 350 employees received a new four-year contract on Thursday. The Clarkstown Town Board approved the agreement with two percent raises in each of the four years.
Aside from the increase, little changed from the union’s prior five-year agreement with the town.
“All the terms and conditions are the same,” said Supervisor Alex Gromack. “All new employees will continue to contribute 10 percent to their health plans.”
The town’s agreement is quite different from what New York and state CSEA employees agreed upon. During the summer, they settled on a five-year contract with a three-year wage freeze, a $1,000 lump-sum payment split into two increments and two-percent pay increases in 2014 and 2015. It also called for state CSEA workers to take nine unpaid days off split between the 2011 and 2012 fiscal years and to pay for a larger share of their health care coverage.
Gromack said the town’s fiscal situation is much better than that of the state. He said Clarkstown has been working to downsize and there are 70 fewer CSEA employees than in 2005. The CSEA includes all town employees who are not elected or appointed.
“All our employees have been doing extra work and picking up the slack,” he explained. “And so we’ve been able to manage. And we think a two percent contract was a fair agreement for each of the four years in light of the sacrifices that they’ve made in the past and to keep continuity going forward.”
CSEA Rockland County Local 1000 President Mary Maloney said the rank and file membership was in favor of the agreement and ratified it earlier this month.
“Both sides agreed the two percent was fair,” she said. “We agreed on a final rate in lieu of not touching the contributions for new employees.”
Under the last contract, new employees were required to pay for 10 percent of their health coverage.
Gromack said the town and union were close to an agreement when the 2012 budget was adopted. He said the contract increase was included in the budget, which has hundreds of line items. Clarkstown’s spending plan went up 0.04 percent.
“We accounted for that in the 2012 budget,” he said. “This agreement will not change the budget. The monies were already there and we still had a zero budget.”
The current contract expires December 31.
