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Canfield Township, Teamsters agree to deal
By ROBERT CONNELLY
CANFIELD
Canfield Township trustees and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 377 have agreed to a new contract after months of negotiations.
The previous contract expired April 30, 2013. Trustees signed off on the new contract Tuesday.
Greg Shadle, vice president of Teamsters 377, said the three-year contract is effective May 1, 2013, and runs to April 30, 2016. “There were no real big changes,” Shadle said. “We’re happy to get it over with.”
Trustee Marie Cartwright explained that since there was no agreement by the end of 2013, the negotiations went to a fact-finding report. That report wasn’t finished until Oct. 15. Each side had seven days to respond, and then it was worked out.
“It took an extraordinary amount of time, but [the fact finding report] did indeed hash out all the details,” Cartwright said.
She explained the changes in the new contract. Health care coverage, paid by the township to the Teamsters’ Health and Welfare Fund, went from $182 per week per employee to $238.
A lump-sum payment will be made to each of the four union workers — the zoning inspector, assistant public-works maintenance foreman, full-time and part-time public-works employees — of $1,200 for 2013 and 2015. Those lump sums “shall be considered as earnable salary for Public Employees’ Retirement System purposes and shall be subject to all applicable deductions,” the contract states.
On top of that, there is a 2 percent increase in wages.
Wages, effective May 1, 2014, for entry-level, full-time salaries are: $44,829, assistant public-works maintenance foreman; $30,763, full-time public-works maintenance worker; $35,812, zoning inspector; $29,681, operations support specialist; and $29,681, clerical specialist. The township does not employ a clerical specialist and operations support specialist at the moment.
The part-time public-works maintenance worker makes $14.79 hourly.