The first city union contract negotiated by Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan's administration is a four-year deal that contains low annual wage increases but also significant salary bumps for about half the 75 bargaining unit members whose pay falls below that of similar workers in other government agencies or the private sector.
The agreement was ratified just before Christmas by the employees. It will be sent to the Anchorage Assembly, which also must approve it before it becomes effective.
Employees involved are mechanics, machinists and fleet maintenance workers in city's public transportation, transit and solid waste services departments. The group formerly was represented by another union, but decertified in 2007 and voted to join the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1547 in late 2008. The agreement has been in negotiation since early 2009, six months before Sullivan became mayor.
The new bargaining unit is comparatively small. The police, fire and municipal employees unions each have several hundred members.
The city's employee relations director, Nancy Usera, said the proposed contract carries no wage increase for this year, and 2 percent annual raises in 2011, 2012 and 2013 -- "certainly reasonable under the current economic situation."
The workers gave up a "service recognition program" that awarded pay raises based on a worker's longevity in city employment, but many of them will also get additional increases designed to bring their pay scale in line with workers in other public agencies and the private sector, she said.
That amounts to a 4 percent market adjustment in 2011, 2.5 percent in 2012 and 2 percent in 2013, Usera said, and will affect 44 of the 75 employees. For those workers, that's on top of the annual 2 percent increases the proposed contract calls for. Still, it's a lot less than they were asking for, she said.
Usera and Sullivan said many of the 44 positions affected are paid so far below industry standards that the city has trouble filling vacancies.
"It made sense to reclassify some of those folks," Sullivan said.
Usera said the city did a study comparing pay for those employees to what's available in private business and other public agencies. Four employees in this bargaining unit, for example, were making $30.71 an hour while the average union pay for similar employees was $37.37, she said.
"What this all comes down to is, are you able to attract and retain qualified employees?" Usera said. "The market for machinists and mechanics is very tight and it's very difficult to find qualified people."
In return, the employees in the new bargaining unit won't get the "service recognition" pay increases that are based on workers' length of employment with the city. Doing away with that is a priority with the new mayor.
"We don't find that there's enough real incentives in the service recognition program to make it cost-effective," Sullivan said. "The fact that it gets phased out, we think, is good."
Sullivan said he's satisfied with the contract as proposed.
"We wouldn't move it forward if we weren't, and we wouldn't present it to (the Assembly) if it wasn't something we were willing to have them accept."
IBEW Business Manager Larry Bell didn't return telephone messages seeking comment Monday.
By DON HUNTER
dhunter@adn.com