Riverhead Town has settled a new labor agreement with police brass.
The new five-year deal with the Superior Officers Association, which represents the police department’s sergeants and lieutenants, runs from Jan. 1, 2016 through Dec. 31, 2020, and provides 2-percent per-year increases in the officers’ base pay for the first four years of the contract and a 1.5-percent increase in the contract’s final year.
The 12-member SOA has been without a contract since Dec. 31, 2015.
The town board Tuesday approved a memorandum of agreement summarizing the terms of the deal.
The agreement has already been approved by the union and will take effect as soon as it is signed by the town, Riverhead Town Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith said after yesterday’s town board meeting.
Employees covered by the contract will see a 6-percent pay hike (increases for the first three years of the contract) immediately upon the effective date of the agreement.
But retroactive pay for 2016, 2017 and the first six months of 2018 won’t be paid out by the town all at once. Instead, retroactive pay will be deferred until a covered employee’s separation date from town employment. Retroactive wages will be paid at the employee’s rate of pay at the time of separation or as of Jan. 1, 2023, whichever is less.
The contract is the first ever to require Riverhead Town police officers to pay a portion of their health insurance costs, but the requirement is most likely symbolic. The clause requiring a 15-percent contribution toward an employee’s health insurance premium only applies to employees joining the SOA unit who are not being promoted from the Riverhead PBA unit — a highly unusual circumstance.
Rank and file Riverhead police officers being promoted to sergeant will “continue to pay the same percentage” towards their health insurance premiums as they did as a PBA member. Currently that percentage is zero.
If a new Riverhead PBA agreement — currently under negotiation — includes a health insurance contribution requirement, it more than likely will apply only to newly hired officers. Since new hires would not likely be promoted to sergeant during the term of the new SOA deal, the health insurance contribution mandated by the new SOA contract will probably have no real fiscal impact.
PBA members have been working without a contract since Jan. 1, 2016. Officials declined to discuss the ongoing negotiations. It is likely that the town is seeking a health insurance contribution from the PBA bargaining unit, as that has been the trend in municipal collective bargaining agreements, which traditionally required municipalities to pay 100 percent of the cost of employees’ health insurance. For example, the Suffolk Police PBA in August 2012 agreed to a 10-year contract running from Jan. 1, 2011 through Dec. 31, 2020 that includes a 15-percent health insurance contribution for all new hires.
The SOA’s 6-percent pay increase that will may effect as soon as the officers’ next paychecks will require the town to pay out about $50,000 more in base salary for police brass than was budgeted this year.
The funds will be drawn from other lines in the operating budget, Jens-Smith said, though she couldn’t give specifics. “It will probably come out of the health insurance line” because the town always budgets a higher amount for health insurance to cover possible rate increases that are unknown when the budget is approved, Jens-Smith said.
The agreement gives the town the option, effective Jan. 1, 2019, to pay out severance benefits over a five year period — including unused sick, vacation and compensatory time and overtime, as applicable.
The new agreement eliminates a requirement that SOA members submit to an annual physical by a doctor chosen by the town.
It makes no changes to longevity pay required by the previous agreement; members receive longevity bonuses of four, six and seven percent of total base pay after 10, 15 and 18 years of service respectively.
“We believe this is a very fair agreement for both sides,” Jens-Smith said Tuesday. “We’re very happy to have it settled.”
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