County comes to terms with unions representing jail, Care Center

Dec. 31--Two of Crawford County's unions will start the new year with new contracts.

Crawford County commissioners voted approve new contracts with unions that represent the county's jail and county Care Center at Wednesday's meeting.

The finished contracts were the result of hard work by county Human Resources Director Susan Lotarski and the union negotiation teams, county Administrator Mark Lessig said.

"I'd like to compliment both HR and the unions," Lessig said.

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees represents the 46 union employees at the Crawford County jail and Service Employees International Union represents the 138 union workers at the Crawford County Care Center.

The new contracts called for the employees to switch health coverage from PPO Blue to Community Blue. Both health plans are covered by Highmark with Community Blue having larger deductibles and higher ceiling of out of pocket expenses for the employees compared to PPO Blue.

"That was the major change," Lotarski said.

The change put the union employees into the same health coverage as the county's non-union employees, Commissioner Jack Lynch said.

The county is still in negotiations with the other county unions, Lotarski said. The contracts with the unions serving Human Services and the judicial-related personnel run out today. There have been some preliminary meetings held with those unions, Lotarski said.

"Hopefully after the new year we'll get some negotiations," Lotarski said.

Earl Corp can be reached at 724-6370 or by email at ecorp@meadvilletribune.com.

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