City and three of 8 unions agree to 3-year deals with wage increases; employees will pay some more on health insurance

CEDAR RAPIDS - The city of Cedar Rapids and three of its eight bargaining units have agreed to new three-year labor contracts that will increase wages 2, 2.5 and 3 percent in each of the next three years.

The new contracts also will have firefighters, police officers and library workers with family insurance plans through the city contribute $30 more a month the first year, $30 more a month the second year and $30 more a month the third year to their health-insurance coverage, Mayor Ron Corbett said at a Friday morning news conference.

By the end of the third year, the contracts call for employees to pay 10 percent of the city's cost of the premium not to exceed $160 a month toward family coverage.

Corbett called the agreements “fair” and “reasonable” and he said the agreements “won't break the bank.”

He said no city wants to endure labor strife, and he thanked the unions and Conni Huber, the city's human resources director, and her negotiating team for reaching three-year agreements.

The city now can keep its attention focused on flood recovery and creating jobs, the mayor said.

City Council member Kris Gulick, a member of the council's Budget Committee, said Friday that the overall wage-and-benefit package in the new contracts will cost the city between 5 and 6 percent more a year at a time when city revenues are only increasing at about 2 percent annually and have been for a decade. As much as 80 percent of the cost of the city's general-operating budget is personnel costs, he said.

“So there is a big gap between 80 percent of our costs and what the revenue growth rate is,” Gulick said. “We can't continue to do that.”

For his part, Corbett said that the labor contracts, which provide larger annual wage increases in each of the three years of the contract, represent an optimism on the part of the City Council that the local economy will be on the rebound.

He said the increases are in line with wage increases at the city's largest employer, Rockwell Collins.

Generally, the city's union employees are earning 3.25 more this year than last year, Huber said Friday.

At the Friday morning news conference Rick Scofield, a fire captain and longtime president of Firefighters Local 11, recalled negotiations between the city and firefighters in the not-to-distant past that were “ugly” and “not a lot of fun.”

He said it was a “joy” to negotiate this time around. He said the firefighters understand that the economic times have not been the best, and he said firefighters also understand that they “have to share” in the increasing cost of health insurance.

Agreements on the new contracts, with solid health-insurance benefits, come on the eve of a U.S. House of Representatives' vote on legislation designed to extend health care to millions of Americans without it.

The firefighters' Scofield said the national firefighters' union supports the legislation in its current form, though the union had questions about an earlier proposal to tax health benefits.

“We believe in health insurance for everyone,” Scofield said. “That's pretty simple. As firefighters, our job is to help people. And we think that's just part of helping people, making sure that they get proper health care insurance.