Nearly 200 of the University’s lowest-paid civil service workers will soon see an additional boost in their paychecks, with the help of a $250,000 annual reallocation by the administration.

On Wednesday, members of the Association for Civil Service Employees overwhelmingly ratified the union’s first revised contract since 2001. The civil service union represents 450 workers at 80 different sites on the Carbondale campus.

Union officials said the $250,000 parity pay for these workers is a good first step toward a similar system for all civil service employees.

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“My priority this year was to help the poorest of the poor – the lowest paid employees among us,” Union President Ruth Pommier said.

The announcement was greeted by loud applause from those who attended Wednesday’s meeting.

The union president, who will retire in June, said the organization used the Northern Study to determine who could receive the parity pay. The study, to which all state public universities report salaries, showed that 197 SIUC employees fell below the state average for civil service workers.

Union officials had estimated that $600,000 would be needed to give all represented workers parity pay, but the University could only spare $250,000.

Pommier said the additional money was a two-year effort that will give these workers money they deserve as well as the blanket 3-percent salary increase that was given to all represented employees.

“No, he didn’t willingly give them up,” Pommier said of her two-year push with Chancellor Walter Wendler to get the parity pay, “but it was the drip, drip, drip that made him come around.”

In a prepared statement, Brent Patton, who worked with the union to negotiate the contract, said the raises and parity pay was something the chancellor has been trying to do for two years with Pommier. Patton and Wendler could not be reached for comment.

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All increases will be retroactive to July 1, when the contract expired. The current contract is set to end in 2007.

“The real issue on this campus is not parity – its compression,” said Jim Clark, representative of the Illinois Education Association.

Because of that, Clark and union leaders also incorporated a longevity clause into the contract. This will ensure that people who have worked at the University for many years will get due compensation and will help to avoid newer employees being hired at the same rate as those who have served for years.

Also, the new contract includes an additional 20 days for sick time under the Family Leave Act. Clark said this provision was very important because 90 percent of the represented employees were women and many have families and loved ones to care for when they get sick.

When the state’s budget crisis began in 2001 and it took back 8.25 percent of the University’s budget, administrators feared they would have to layoff about 80 employees. In the end, the number was contained to 42, and some of those people were reassigned to other positions on campus.

Clear layoff language now exists in the contract, and no one can be laid-off because of a failed evaluation, Pommier said

This language and others were cleaned up to make the new contract much more user-friendly and help people know their rights, Clark said.

Pommier also spoke about the union’s historical membership problems.

“I hope this collective bargaining agreement gives you an opportunity to re-sell the union,” she said.

She said the state’s budget problems of recent years have been hard on civil service workers, with no salary appropriations set aside for them by the General Assembly. The upcoming gubernatorial elections will be very important, she said.

She also encouraged all civil service employees to go to Springfield as much as possible to help lobby for their fellow workers. Pommier said she plans to spend the rest of her term lobbying in Springfield to help save civil service workers’ pensions.

Reporter Andrea Zimmermann can be reached at [email protected]