186 employees of Berrien County have gone from being represented by a union to being non-union.
The Berrien County Board of Commissioners on Thursday approved the change at the request of the union that formerly represented them. Berrien County Administrator Brian Dissette tells us the county was notified on April 29 the Fraternal Order of Police Labor Council has disclaimed its interest in the general employees, who are not law enforcement officers.
The change came during normal negotiations with the union.
“We anticipated that our cost of labor were going to go up,” Dissette said. “The the surprise on this one was that the large unit, the large union unit, had opted to decertify and end their relationship with, with the union.”
Dissette says the county respects the right of employees to be represented by a union. This decision was not made by the county, although it did require a whole lot of work by the county as new Human Resources Director Kristin Reynolds had to coordinate with 22 department heads to sort out the wages and benefits of all these employees.
Reynolds tells us the affected employees are spread out across many departments, but 54 of them are with the health department. Others are sheriff’s department clerical staff and support staff at the jail. Losing their union representation will mean pay increases that average about 5% and more vacation time for many of them.
The total cost to the county’s general fund is about $300,000.
In total, Reynolds tells us the county has about 900 people on its payroll, including seasonal and part-time staff.
