Mansfield City Council members gave lengthy discussion to impending pay raises for city union employees at their regular monthly meeting on Tuesday.
“We have either through conciliation or through contract negotiations with the union, will put into effect a one percent pay raise for bargaining unit (union) employees,” said city Human Resources Director David Remy. “Some of those raises go back as far as April of last year…as a result of those awards and negotiations the mayors administration has decided to grant a one percent pay raise to non-bargaining personnel under his control and I believe the finance department is considering that also.”
Remy told council members that in order to be able to give the pay raises, the salary caps on some of the non-bargaining positions needed to be raised.
Remy also requested that the confidential secretary position in the fire department be changed and classified as an administrative assistant.
“That person has taken on a great number of increased duties since she became an employee of the city and truly is an administrative assistant. She is more than a confidential secretary,” Remy said.
There were also “roughly 12” job grade change requests, said Remy. “I had evaluated all 12 of those and I felt that four of them merited a grade increase. The other eight, I rejected or denied.”
Since the denial of those eight requests, Remy said, there have been about 20 to 25 more job grade change requests.
“We are going to arbitration on all of those later this year,” he said. “I did not feel that those (positions) actually deserved a grade change…The four that I did grant, I felt deserved it because of increased job skills required to carry out the job and increased duties within that job.”
Once the bill is passed, the pay raises will be retroactive to Jan. 1 of this year, said Remy. In regards to the pay raises in the mayor’s office and the finance department, they will back date to May or June, he said.
Third-ward City Councilman Jon Van Harlingen mentioned the non-union people who work for the city and if there was any thought to giving them pay raises as well.
“I think it’s safe to say that every city employee has taken on more duties than they ever have before,” said Remy. “What we’re trying to do is create some parity between what the unions got and what we feel the non-bargaining personnel should get. I think it will merit looking at again at the beginning of the year. It will probably be considered as one of the budgetary requests for 2015. These are all things that are in the planning stages. Right now, we’re just trying to bring the non-bargaining people into some parity with the others and recognize the work they’ve done and the sacrifices they’ve made also.”
At-Large City Councilwoman Ellen Haring questioned Remy on the difference between the pay disparity between a confidential secretary and an administrative assistant. “There should be no disparity,” said Remy.
After looking through the documents, Remy said, “there is some disparity between all the bottom numbers, but all the top numbers or caps should be the same for all of them. And if I have to make those adjustments, I will.”
Tuesday’s meeting was the first reading of the bill. It will be discussed and read one more time, at their next regular monthly meeting, before council votes to accept or deny the pay raises.
Follow Angel N. Ross-Taylor on Twitter @angelnichole222
