Union asks for change in hours

By Jordan Cohen

MINERAL RIDGE — The president of the local representing Mahoning Valley Sanitary District hourly employees asked the board of directors to change work schedules to a four-day work week with 10-hour days.

Currently, the employees work eight-hour days, five days each week.

“We would waive overtime pay except when it goes beyond 10 hours,” said Joe Woodley, president of AFSCME Local 1649, which represents plant and field maintenance personnel, and assistant chemists for the sanitary district, the water provider for Youngstown and Niles.

Woodley told the district board at its Wednesday meeting the switch would apply to 23 of the local’s 41 members.

Woodley said the 23 do not work Saturdays and Sundays under their current contract, but that would change with the four-day work week.

“We would rotate our days off so everyone would have a different day,” he said. “This would be like getting 50 hours of coverage for 40 hours’ pay.”

The board did not seem eager to take advantage of the offer but did not reject it

“We have to look at all possibilities,” said Matt Blair, MVSD president, “such as what happens when reporting off during summer when we are very labor-intensive.”

Blair asked Woodley what the downside of the change might be, and the local president said he could not think of any. Woodley said the upside, in addition to the weekend coverage, would be the reduction of personal fuel costs for his membership due to one less day of driving to work.

In other board matters, Chief Engineer Tom Holloway announced that the Ohio Public Works Commission has approved a grant of $550,000 for sludge treatment improvements.

The sanitary district had applied for the grant late last year. In addition, the district has applied for more than $11 million in federal funds for five major projects including watershed protection and new control valves. The board also has requested stimulus funding from the state.

Holloway said the board has officially taken possession of the historic Strock Stone House, which had been leased to Austintown. The district terminated the lease in order to qualify for federal funds for badly needed repairs for the 175-year old structure.

The engineer said the board recently spent $5,800 to fix the house boiler. The Austintown Historical Society continues its monthly public tours of the building, which once was a safe house for runaway slaves before and during the Civil War.