Brookfield trustees voted 5-0 on Feb. 14 to ratify a new three-year contract with its public works employees after union members voted unanimously to accept the deal. The previous contract with members of Teamsters Union Local 705 expired Dec. 31, 2021.
The new deal, approved by village trustees without comment, runs through the end of 2024 and ensures base pay raises annually of 2.5 percent, although step raises also included in the salary schedule will bump those annual raise higher for those who qualify for the step increases.
The 17 public works employees who belong to the bargaining unit are each classified in one of three salary “ranges.” Annual pay on the lowest salary range starts at $56,893. That same employee by the third year of the contract, as the result of annual step raises, will make $62,678, a total increase of 10 percent versus the 7.5 percent guaranteed by annual base pay raises.
Salaries for the other two pay ranges begin at $65,624 and $71,586, respectively, and top out at $80,265 and $82,837.
The new contract also clarifies how union employees are to be compensated for working on holidays, with a distinction made for New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, July 4, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
If an employee works one of those holidays, they are entitled to two times their rate of pay in addition to receiving holiday pay. On the other six holidays listed in the contract, one of which is the employee’s birthday, the employee is to be paid one and a half times their rate of pay in addition to holiday pay.
Another change in the contract, is an increase in the “on-call” pay for foremen, which was upped to $100 every three months from $80.
