Unionized Linn prosecutors secure 7.45% wage boost

CEDAR RAPIDS - Fifteen assistant Linn County attorneys, who have organized into a new labor union bargaining unit to improve their pay, secured a pay raise of 7.45 percent as a group, an increase above the 2.5 percent they otherwise would have received.

The Linn County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday said it will approve the new five-year contract with the 15 prosecutors' bargaining unit, Local 204 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

The attorneys already have approved the contract.

The pay raise, for the budget year that begins today, will cost the county $52,908 a year more in wages for the 15 prosecutors over the 2.5 percent salary increase the group would have gotten if they hadn't formed a bargaining unit and negotiated the contract.

Lisa Powell, the county's human resources director who helped negotiate the new contract, told the supervisors the contract calls for annual salary increases of 3.19 percent, 5.24 percent, 4.7 percent and 5.53 percent in the subsequent four years.

County Attorney Jerry Vander Sanden and his top deputies, Gary Jarvis and Nick Maybanks, are not in the bargaining unit. Nor are two civil prosecutors in the office who work closely with Jarvis, who handles contract negotiations for the county.

Powell said the current total salary amount for assistant prosecutors in the Linn County Attorney's Office ranks behind Johnson and Dubuque counties and is just above Scott and Black Hawk counties, even though Linn County is the state's second most populous county. The salary totals are well behind Polk County, which is substantially larger than Linn County, she said.

Vander Sanden will be paid $160,411 in the new budget year that begins today, which is a 2 percent raise over his current salary.

Part of the motivation for the office's assistant prosecutors to form a union was the increasing wage gap between Vander Sanden and them.

Powell said top prosecutors earn about 56 percent of Vander Sanden's salary; midlevel prosecutors earn about 51 percent; and entry level prosecutors, 44 percent. Under the new contract, the target is to increase those numbers to 68 percent, 61 percent and 50 percent for the three classes at the end of five years, she said.

The two civil attorneys who work under Jarvis and who are not in the union will receive salary increases equal to the highest-paid prosecutors in the bargaining unit.

Powell said the contract with the assistant prosecutors addressed their 'legitimate wage concerns” while allowing the county attorney to continue to exercise his management rights, which include promotions, discipline and firings.

According to the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board, assistant prosecutors in Black Hawk, Dallas, Dubuque, Jasper, Polk, Warren and Woodbury counties are members of bargaining units.