Home Opinion Time out, Council

Time out, Council

Written by Baker City Herald Editorial Board October 19, 2009 05:46 am

The Baker City Council made a mistake last week when it voted 4-3 to change the labor contract with the union that represents 28 city workers, most in public works.

The current contract, which took effect last year, already had a more generous overtime/comp time policy than previous deals.

Trouble is, the city blatantly ignored the overtime provisions in those past contracts, at least back to 1990, interim City Manager Tim Collins wrote in a report for councilors.

Those previous contracts entitled union workers to overtime or comp time only if they worked more than 40 hours in a week.

Yet according to Collins, the city awarded employees overtime or comp time on a daily basis — any day when they worked longer than their normal shift.

The city ended that practice about two years ago. Under the current five-year contract, union workers get overtime or comp time if they exceed their daily shift by more than two hours.

That’s fair.

What’s not fair is what the Council did last week: Give workers a benefit which they were not legally entitled to, but which they received anyway for close to 20 years.