New Castle Reaches New Three-Year Contract With CSEA
The New Castle Town Board agreed to a new contract with the municipality’s CSEA employees earlier this week, approving modest pay hikes for each of the next three years.
The new pact, which takes effect Jan. 1, provides the town’s 56 civil service employees with a 1 percent raise in 2013, a 1.5 percent salary hike in 2014 and 1.75 percent more in 2015, said Town Administrator Penny Paderewski.
Paderewski said the economic climate makes providing raises difficult but with cutbacks to staff in the past two years the town’s workers have come through admirably to make sure all of the departments function properly.
“It’s a difficult economy but our employees have worked very hard and the town did the best it could,” she said.
For 2011, New Castle trimmed its staff by 11 employees through retirement incentives. Another 7.5 positions were done away with for this year.
Another key portion of the agreement that was approved by the town board at its Sept. 10 meeting was resetting Step 1 of the salary schedule to 2010 levels for employees hired during the length of the contract, Paderewski said.
The new contract also requires larger health insurance contributions for new hires. Starting Jan. 1, any new CSEA employee will contribute 25 percent toward their health insurance plan, higher than all existing employees. For current workers, their contribution will remain the same, ranging from 15 to 20 percent for most depending on length of service, said Paderewski. A few of the most senior employees will continue to make no contributions.
Most of the employees covered by the contract are clerical staff and members of the Department of Public Works.
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