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DOT Negotiations Update

August 17, 2010

For more than nine months, NAGE negotiators have been working to advance the interests of members who worked for the former Mass Highway and the Executive Office of Transportation.

With the merger of the executive branch transportation agencies and the Mass Turnpike in November of last year, NAGE members have found themselves working side by side with former Mass Turnpike employees.

Historically, employees of authorities have had significantly higher salaries and better benefits than state employees because they have had an independent revenue stream and no need to obtain appropriations from the Legislature.

NAGE’s approach in these negotiations has been driven by a few basic principles:

  1. Employees of comparable experience who do the same job should receive the same pay.
  2. Employees who do the same work should be in the same bargaining unit and should be covered by the same work rules as other employees who do the same work.
  3. The Unions that represent transportation employees should work together to ensure that all employees are treated fairly.

After long and hard negotiations in an extremely difficult economic and political environment, we believe we are close to reaching an agreement among all the parties that makes considerable progress toward these goals.

The agreement we are close to finalizing would accomplish a variety of things, including the following:

  1. Former Turnpike employees will be placed in state job titles and pay grades. If a former Turnpike (or MassPort) employee’s salary is outside the state pay schedule they will not have their pay cut, but rather, would be “red-circled” at their current pay rate until June 30, 2012 when the state contracts expires. During that period, former state employees will receive the already negotiated pay increases under the state NAGE contracts as will any former Turnpike employees whose salary is within the state salary range. ( June 30, 2010 -1%, June 30, 2011-3%, June 30 2012-3%). Former turnpike employees whose salaries are above the state ranges will not receive these increases until the state salary range catches up or July, 2012, whichever occurs first. Pay increases for all employees after July 1, 2012 are subject to future negotiations and cannot now be predicted. All of the involved unions have agreed however that they will seek to distribute future increases in a way that provides a fair distribution between raises for all employees and the need of lower paid employees to “catch-up”.
  2. State employees (but not Turnpike employees) would be subject to the furloughs we negotiated for state employees and would receive the reimbursement for increased co-pays and deductibles we negotiated for state employees (former Turnpike employees will not receive this reimbursement)
  3. State employees will share in a $2.06 million pay equity pool to grant pay increases to state employees whose positions pay less than those of former Turnpike employees who do the same or similar jobs.
  4. This pay equity pool will be replenished with a 10% share of the savings obtained through the reorganization of transportation agencies and other savings measures.
  5. A complete classification review of all titles of former Mass Highway employees will be conducted to ensure that they are properly classified.
  6. Improved contractual language has been negotiated in a number of areas including discipline, transfers and shift bidding.

We appreciate that these negotiations have been drawn out and that until now, we haven’t been able to say much about how they were going. Over the next month or so, however, we will be holding a series of meetings across the DOT to give members the chance to tell us what you think and to allow NAGE representatives to give you more specific details about what is likely to occur in the upcoming months.