EASTON, Pa. — Just days after calling off a looming strike, workers in Northampton County’s Department of Human Services have ratified a new contract, officials said Friday.
The union represents employees in many of the department’s most critical sections, including Emergency Services, Early Intervention, Information and Referral Services, Children and Families and Aging.
More than 80% of members approved the new contract hammered out in a negotiation session held Monday, representatives for Service Employees International Union Local 668 said.
At the end of May, members voted to call a one-day strike on Friday if the negotiators failed to make a deal.
“We do still have some work to do, but our membership is very happy,” said Kezzy Johnson, chief shop steward for the union’s Northampton County members.
In a statement, Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure said “we like, admire and respect the work our Human Services employees do.”
The approved agreement is broadly similar to the version members rejected late last month, officials said, with a few key differences.
McClure said the previous offer amounted to a 15% raise over three years; the ratified contract amounts to a 15% raise over the next three years.
Part of the previously-offered raise came in the form of short-term bonuses for employees. The approved contract, however, locks in a 15% increase to employees’ base pay, making the raise permanent and lifting the floor on future negotiations.
The new agreement also shrinks by half an increase to employees’ shares of their healthcare costs.
“I think there was a disagreement between the union and the employer on what constituted the 15% number,” SEIU Local 668 President Steve Catanese said.
By making the increase to employees’ base pay and therefore permanent, he said, the new contract will help to remedy a staff shortage in the Department of Human Services that began with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Johnson identified the staff shortage as “the crisis” in the department, and said there is still more work to do in remedying it.
“The main goal at this point is to make sure that this is a place that people want to come to, and that they want to stay,” she said. “This is a first step in the right direction. And we have a lot more steps to go, but we're heading there.”
