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Town of Massena reaches three-year deal with library workers' union

Posted 9/25/18

By ANDY GARDNER MASSENA -- The Town of Massena and Teamsters union have reached a three-year contract for Massena Public Library hourly employees. Town Supervisor Steve O’Shaughnessy said the major …

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Town of Massena reaches three-year deal with library workers' union

Posted

By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- The Town of Massena and Teamsters union have reached a three-year contract for Massena Public Library hourly employees.

Town Supervisor Steve O’Shaughnessy said the major accomplishment was setting a consistent salary schedule for all of the hourly positions.

“We have a three-year contract and the main thing that both sides really, we both had the same goals, but the main one was to get the salaries evened out. Library clerks were at different rates from the last contract. They had people making varied salaries,” the supervisor said. “We came up with the definition and job description of library clerk, library aid, library, page” account clerk, deputy director of the library … assigned an hourly rate to each one of those.”

He said the hourly employees wanted a specific monetary value assigned to their raises, rather than a percentage. Their wages will go up 40 cents per hour the first year the contract is in effect, and 30 center per hour for years two and three, O’Shaughnessy said.

The Town Council at their Wednesday, Sept. 19 meeting voted unanimously to allow the supervisor to sign the contract.

O’Shaughnessy said he and Councilor Tom Miller, along with library board Trustee Joseph Savoca negotiated the deal.

In other library-related business before the board on Sept. 19, the councilors voted to give a lift installation and film digitization project to Northern Tier Contracting of Gouverneur.

The supervisor said they will be responsible for replacing an elevator and digitizing film archives that include VHS, 8mm film and other physical formats. They will be paid $49,200 for the entire job.

O’Shaughnessy expects work to begin this fall.