By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The local chapter of Hutchinson City employees voted to reject the memorandum of understanding from the City of Hutchinson last week. This includes many job descriptions, including areas like public works, parks, clerical and animal shelter. That's not a comprehensive list.
There are 16 union members, but the contract covers 125 city employees, about a quarter of the city's staff.
"Regardless if you have one person in the union or you have two people in the union, the union makes it fair for everybody," said Mayor Steve Garza. "I would suggest, in my point of view, go back and try to work it out. We worked it out with the police. We worked it out with fire. Let's get this worked out."
Union local president Greg DeGarmo appeared to be amenable to getting something worked out quickly without going to mediation.
"Our negotiating team would love to sit down and discuss some more," DeGarmo said. "We're not at odds with the city, at all. We'd like to settle things and get them worked out. This is just our first vote. Some of the people were well informed of the issues, some people kind of came in and just voted and weren't real informed and so, I don't know how that affected the outcome of the vote, because we don't know who voted how, but we would love to sit down and continue negotiations to try to get things worked out."
It was HR director Tom Sanders intent to contact the union's business representative and try to get talks going again as soon as possible. DeGarmo was on board with that.
"My negotiating team can meet at a moment's notice," DeGarmo said. "Management's been really good working with us getting them off to meet in negotiations. We can sit down and iron out whatever the problems are and try to get this settled. We just got such a late start in negotiations. We usually have our first vote in the summer and then we can go back, maybe and iron out any issues. We're running so late this year."
The council wants to see an amended MOU at their next meeting so that the covered employees can get their raises, because that can't happen without an agreement.
The council approved a separate agreement with the city's 911 dispatchers Tuesday.