By Paul Westmoore
Niagara Gazette
NIAGARA FALLS —
College officials reviewed a contract proposal it offered the Niagara County Community College Faculty Association on March 5 at Wednesday’s open Board of Trustees session.
But the labor package did not appear to elicit a lot of enthusiasm from Association President Joseph Colosi.
The college and the 167-member union have been trying to hammer out a contract agreement since the old teachers’ contract expired on Aug. 31, 2006. Since then, the process has been floundering for 44 months.
Colosi said he didn’t feel anymore optimistic about the proposal now than he did in March.
Not made public until Wednesday and done without the union’s knowledge, according to Colosi, the contract offers faculty members raises retroactive to Sept. 1, 2006.
The school has agreed to grant faculty members a 1 percent base salary increase in 2006-07 and in 2007-08 along with a 2 percent signing bonus is each of those years. In 2008-09, the faculty would get a1.5 percent base salary increase and a 1.5 percent signing bonus, and then a 3 percent base salary hike in both 2009-10 and 2010-11.
Jeff Swiatek, the college’s attorney and chief labor negotiator, said that would bring the faculty’s “average annual compensation increase (along with automatic increments already included in the union contracts) to 3.6 percent per year. That would place the “total additional cost, with (salary step) increments, over the five years” to the college at $5.5 million, of which total new money spent over the same period would come to $3 million. Average additional compensation including increments for each union member over the five-year period would come to $33,000 and of that the average new money for each union member over five years would come to $17,800,” Swiatek said.
Colosi said the proposed salary increases doesn’t quite resemble what the union and the administration had been working toward.
“It’s interesting that before this proposal, we were looking at 3 percent base salary wage increases in all five years. The only problem (the union) had is we wanted an additional sixth year in the contract because basically what was going to happen is we’d settle and negotiations would have to start up all over again for the future without having had a chance to test the contract language at all. That’s what the college was giving too, a 3 percent base wage increase per year,” Colosi said.
Swiatek said health care is the largest employee benefit cost in the contract and noted the college has implemented an “experience-rated” program through Blue Cross/Blue Shield that will give the college a $400,000 annualized premium reduction. He said the cost reduction for the five-year contract would come to about $933,000.
While the union has agreed to such a program in future contracts, Colosi said the college unilaterally implemented the program last year without negotiating the change in the current labor agreement. He said the union is challenging the matter and is taking issue to arbitration under the state’s Taylor Law on July 8.
He said the administration’s move took away union members’ ability to choose an alternative health care plan allowed under the contract like the ability to go with Independent Health. He said it forced many members to go with Blue Cross/Blue Shield by forcing them out of Independent Health and other options in violation of their legal contract.
Colosi said the union is willing to go to the experience-rated program to help the college out, but said it will save the college at least $400,000 a year in costs, well beyond the administration’s estimates.
“We see that as a major concession, but apparently they don’t. The savings could fund our contract.”
