Expired contract goes out to Westchester's civil service union members

By LIZ ANDERSON   THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: February 19, 2006)

It's been 20 months since their last labor negotiations were settled, and two months since the resulting contract expired.

So you might not fault the roughly 4,000 Civil Service Employees Association members for being surprised to hear that printed copies of their contract — for the years 2002-2005 — were finally available for distribution last week.

Hillary Raimondi, an associate county attorney, and CSEA Unit 9200 President Jack McPhillips both attributed the delays to the need to make further amendments and clarifications to the contract after the original agreement.
"The union and the county went back and forth trying to work out the new language — on their desk, (then) on our desk, it just took a little while," Raimondi said. "We just wanted to make sure that everyone agreed on the language, that it was correct."

"It just seems like we, not forgot about it, but it laid low for a while," McPhillips said. He said at one point there was "a feeling going around" that, with a new contract coming, "did we have to print this one at all."
"It was our position we wanted it done," he said — in part because the provisions of the old contract will remain in place until a new deal is struck.

Until now, he said, union members who wanted to look up their work terms would have had to take an old copy of the pre-2002 contract and compare it to a union handout given out when the contract was settled that detailed changes in the new arrangement.

McPhillips said the union received the printed contracts Tuesday and planned to hand them out at work sites during lunch hours. The union also expects to put the finalized contract online soon at its Web site, www.csea9200.com, he said.

The union and county's first meeting to start the new bargaining process is scheduled for Wednesday.