Prior to the televised meeting yesterday, the Select Board held a workshop session to go over suggested changes in the Personnel Bylaws. Unfortunately, we made little progress.
One suggestion that we have been kicking around for some time is to offer all employees the opportunity to cash in some of their accumulated sick time at some per diem rate. $50 per day has been suggested. I think that is a great idea and should be adopted. We have had a large turn back from many departments this year and I think that the redemption of the sick days would met the criteria of a one time expense that we have set as our policy for unspent revenue. I'd like to hear what the community thinks of this idea. Let me know in comments.
A major sticking point in moving forward on other issues...
... is that they would apply to only those employees not currently covered by a collective bargaining agreement. We have to start somewhere and the ultimate goal would be to extend the changes to the bargaining units during negotiations. In the interim, the non union employees would have reduced benefits as compared to the union employees. I don't think that is unfair. Not having to punch a clock or live by contract rules for everything is by itself a benefit in my opinion. This gets back to my premise that all sides are going to have to make sacrifices in order for the town to return to fiscal health. The taxpayers have done a part in providing an override. I think the employees are going to have to show that they are willing to contribute to the solution as well.
I had a 401K plan where I worked. The union employees had a quite generous pension plan. My wife worked as a union employee and her employer paid all her health care insurance cost. Her sister worked for the same company in management and shared the cost of health insurance with the company. I don't think it is uncommon practice in private industry to have different benefit plans.
What are your thoughts on this? Do all employees have the same benefits where you work?
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Select Board working session 9/8
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2 comments:
Which employees are we talking about? How many days can they carry over? Will buying them out now allow them to accumulate more in their place? The per diem rate will only go up but if they are allowed to accumulate a maximum amount of days twice by doing this, it doesn't make sense. If we pay it now and wash our hands of it, then it does make sense.
Vetting ideas like this is why this blog is useful.
Cashing in sick days is a good idea provided they dont re-accumulate them. If they do a limit should be placed on the number of days alowed. The teachers get $15-20 dollars per day up to 150 days.Above that is forfeit.Its not unusual for a teacher to retire with hundreds of days only to lose most of them. In schools you dont save with use or lose because for every day a teacher takes off you have to pay a substitute to cover for them. I doubt Town employees are substituted for on a regular basis.
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