Union, city continue fight over longevity pay

A significant number of unhappy City of Kalispell employees plan to take their complaints about troubled contract talks directly to the city council on June 18.

Also, they plan to set up informational pickets later this month to take their case on the final sticking issue - longevity pay - to the public.

The up-and-down negotiations went south again after the union's and city's representatives signed a tentative agreement for a three-year contract in late May - and then accused each other of deliberately interpreting a key point.

"We think we had a deal, and they {the city's' negotiators} are playing games with us," regional union negotiator Timm Twardoski told about 50 city employees Tuesday evening.

But City Manager Jim Patrick said Wednesday: "We didn't change this. … This was not something we did underhandedly and forged {Twardoski's} signature to."

A show of hands indicated that at least three-quarters of the 50 people at Tuesday's union meeting plan to go to the city council on June 18. At least two-thirds indicated they would participate in informational pickets. The 73 members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local No. 256 have been working for the City of Kalispell under a contract that expired June 30, 2006 - and a three-year clock will start when a new one is signed. Contract talks have been underway since April 2006.

Local No. 256 represents the city's maintenance, construction, clerical and non-sworn fire and police employees.

The talks' slow progress - which now have a mediator involved - has frustrated both sides.

Both sides tentatively agreed on a 16 percent wage hike over three years. Both sides agreed that a significant number of city employees make less than their public and private counterparts elsewhere in Northwest Montana. Both sides agreed the current tentative contract is better pay-wise than previous contracts for the city employees.

But major strife comes from radically different interpretations on how longevity pay should actually be calculated.

For many years, city employees have been receiving longevity pay at the rate of an extra 5 cents per hour for each year of working for Kalispell's government. For example, someone has worked five years for the city would receive an extra 25 cents per hour on top of his or her standard hourly wage.

The tentative agreement bumped that longevity pay to an extra 10 cents per hour for each year worked for the city.

City Manager Jim Patrick and City Attorney Charles Harball pointed to clauses in the signed agreement that say the 10-cent-per-hour longevity pay applies only to the final two years of the proposed three-year contract. They said Twardoski and other Local No. 256 representatives were aware of this when they signed it.

Meanwhile, Twardoski said those particular longevity clauses are intertwined with another clause elsewhere in the tentative contract - a clause that entitles each Local No. 256 employee to an extra 10 cents per hour for each year that he or she has worked for the city.

For example, under the city's interpretation, an employee of 18 years would received an extra 20 cents an hour of longevity pay two years from now.

Under the union's interpretation, that same 18-year employee would receive an extra $2 an hour of longevity pay two years from now.

Twardoski said the average annual pay for a Local No. 256 employee is about $28,000.

Each side claims the other party agreed to its interpretation when the tentative agreement was signed in late May. And each side claims the other reneged after the tentative agreement was signed.

Twardoski speculated that the city's negotiators agreed to the union's interpretation, but then recrunched their financial figures afterward - and didn't like how the budget numbers came out.

Meanwhile, Patrick and Harball said they are insulted by the idea that they would sign a tentative agreement without crunching the budget numbers beforehand. Patrick said that if the union negotiators believed the city would agree to an 16 percent raise over three years, plus a 10-cent-per-hour-per-year longevity pay potentially stretching back 20 years or earlier, "they've got to be crazy."

"I can't justify that to the council. I can't justify that to the citizens of Kalispell - that kind of raise," he said.

Meanwhile, Twardoski said the longevity pay - 5 cents per hour per year - has been part to of city's pay packages for many years, and that the city's negotiators were aware of that. "It's been there forever," Twardoski said.

There were rumbles at Tuesday's union meeting about calling for a strike authorization vote - which is not an actual strike vote, but is a legally required step before a strike vote can be taken. Some Local No. 256 members saw a strike authorization vote as a way to increase pressure on the city's negotiators.

However, at Twardoski's urging, the local's members decided not to call for a strike authorization vote until after finding out how the next negotiating session with a mediator - scheduled for July 19 - turns out.