GREENFIELD — As a gesture of good faith, Town Council voted to fund a retroactive 2 percent raise for emergency dispatchers as they continue negotiating contracts with the town.
During its meeting last week, the council voted 9-2 to appropriate $45,000 for the first year of Unit A contracts along with a tentative agreement to give dispatchers a 2 percent raise retroactive to July 1. According to Greenfield Finance Director Marjorie Lane Kelly, the town was bound to fund the first year of the patrolmen’s Unit A contract at $37,500 — also retroactive to July 1 — and the remainder of the money will be used to pay for the dispatchers’ raises.
“At the time this tentative agreement came to pass, there were negotiations going on about regionalization, there were questions about unfair labor practice being thrown around, there was a big concern about would the union be dissolved? Are we outsourcing?” Kelly said. “As a gesture of good faith to maintain the conversation, to make sure that they were still in the fold, if you will, this tentative agreement was offered.”
Some councilors, however, said they were concerned that appropriating the money would set a bad precedent.
“I am hesitant to vote money to pay raises when the contract has not been executed and has not been finished,” Council President Brickett Allis said. “I believe to do it this way, to give a raise before the contract is negotiated, does not give any enticement to the union to negotiate any further. In my time on the council, we’ve never voted something like this.”
The council went into executive session for about half an hour to discuss the negotiations and emerged to continue the discussion in public and to vote.
Council Treasurer Karen “Rudy” Renaud spoke in favor of the raises for dispatchers, saying it’s money that’s been owed to them for almost a year. She added it’s not uncommon to do, especially in the public sector, because negotiations can go on for a long time.
“It’s going to be a bigger check we have to write if we have to wait another year. I think this is just a really good faith thing to be done,” she said. “This is money that they’re going without. It’s not a lot of money — it’s less than $1,000 per person.”
Council Vice President Isaac Mass said he wasn’t going to vote for the appropriation, not because he thinks the dispatchers don’t deserve a raise, but because he feels it would set a precedent that other unions would be eager to take advantage of in the future.
Precinct 7 Councilor William Childs disagreed, saying, “We shouldn’t be afraid that this will set a precedent, because what’s going to happen is if somebody else comes and we really don’t like what somebody else wants, we just down it. We have the power to down it, so if we have the power to down the next one, how does this set the precedent? It doesn’t. It just gives these people what they deserve.”
You can reach Aviva Luttrell at:
aluttrell@recorder.com
or 413-772-0261, ext. 268
On Twitter: @AvivaLuttrell