Today your bargaining team met with the County. We gave counter proposals on Sick Leave Verification, Part-time workers hours, and incorporating side letters already signed into the contract sections.

We heard a presentation from the County’s Benefits Manager about the County wanting to switch the benefit plan year from fiscal to calendar. What that would mean after this open enrollment in May, there would be a 6-month benefit “year” and then another open enrollment in October for the next benefit year to start January 1st. Your team proposed that the County pick up 100% of any cost increase from the October open enrollment for the 2027 plan year.

Your team also talked to the County about how we keep benefits for part-time workers since now they can only work 1,559 hours a year to stay on payroll.  During the next update we will send out documents for everyone to view.

The last major development was the County came with some classifications that will be used as benchmarks for this bargaining cycle only to address the benchmarks that had less than six matches in the survey.

The County did not come with a financial proposal with the reasoning that they are still costing out the union’s proposals, and there is uncertainty with what money is coming from the federal government and what level of funding is coming from the State. When the state cuts funding, they do not cut the County’s responsibility to keep providing the services.Our next bargaining session is on Wednesday, May 6 at the Union office.