AUSTINTOWN Unused vacation time remains contract issue

A new contract for dispatchers is set to be approved by trustees.
By IAN HILL
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
AUSTINTOWN -- Negotiators for the police union say they won't issue a recommendation on the latest contract offer from township trustees.
Lt. Emil Grahovac, spokesman for the union negotiating committee, said trustees and the committee disagree over how unused vacation time should be addressed in the new contract. Under the union's last contract, which expired Jan. 1, officers were allowed to accumulate unused vacation time until the day they left the department.
They were then paid for the unused time. Officers begin receiving vacation time after their first year of work.
The union doesn't want that language in the contract to change.
Trustees' latest contract offer, however, proposes eliminating or clarifying the language to ensure that officers won't be paid for more vacation time than they earned. Township Administrator Michael Dockry said that in 2000, an officer who left the department successfully argued to an arbitrator that he should be paid for more vacation time than he earned.
What's planned
Grahovac said the union negotiating committee will present the trustees' contract offer to the union without recommendation at a meeting Tuesday.
He noted that the union and trustees were close to reaching a contract agreement Wednesday until trustees made the proposal to change the vacation time.
Union President Keith Smith noted that the union was willing to make concessions on two hotly debated issues: health care and minimum staffing.
The next contract is expected to call for the union to help pay for health care for the first time, and it won't set a minimum number of officers who have to work each shift, Smith said.
The next contract also will call for police to receive 3 percent annual raises, he said.
That's the same annual percentage police and firefighter dispatchers and firefighters received in contracts negotiated this year. Trustees are expected to approve a new 3-year contract with dispatchers Monday.
The new contract with firefighters was approved July 31.
Frank Yacucci, director of the dispatchers union, said the union was satisfied with its new contract.
"You never get everything you want, but that works for both sides," Yacucci said.
The dispatchers union had asked for 4-percent annual raises.
hill@vindy.com