The recently approved four-year collective bargaining agreement between the city of Bloomington and its AFSCME union is now covered in the city’s salary ordinance.
At its final meeting of the year, on Dec. 21, Bloomington’s city council approved a change to the salary ordinance that sets pay for city employees next year.
The acronym for the union name stands for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union includes workers in utilities, the street and fleet divisions of public works, parks and recreation, sanitation, and the animal shelter, among others.
It’s AFSCME workers who plow the snow, salt the streets and empty the trash carts that residents set out every week.
Based on a comparison of the new AFSCME contract with the previous four-year agreement , in the first year of the new accord, there’s a pay increase for union members that ranges from 5 percent to about 18 percent, depending on the position. [2023-2026 AFSCME contract] [2019-2022 AFSCME contract]
In the second year of the new contract, the pay increase is 5 percent. In the final two years of the contract, which runs from 2023 through 2026, the pay increase is 3.1 percent.
The city council’s action came on a 9–0 vote taken at its Dec. 21 meeting.
The council’s action did not approve the contract—that step had already been completed through negotiations between the union and Bloomington mayor John Hamilton’s administration. The council’s action just put the requirements of the contract into local law. Continue reading “AFSCME pay increases of 5% to 18% in first year OK’d by Bloomington city council in 2023 salary ordinance”
