The Cass County Board of Supervisors were supposed to have met Thursday, with a representative of the Jailer’s Union with regard to an exchange of collective bargaining proposals, but the AFSCME representative failed to show up. Regardless, Auditor Dale Sunderman provided the media with copies of both proposals.There were many areas of the three-year contact where the County and the Jailer’s Union disagree. One of those areas concerns wages.

The Union proposes a 3.5-percent wage increase effective July 1^st, 2013, for all steps and pay grades of the salary schedule, and a shift differential increase amounting to 80-cents per hour for jailers, which would match that of deputies. The County instead, proposes giving all Deputies a base annual salary, which is 70-percent of the Sheriff’s annual base salary. All remaining non-deputy union members would receive a 3-percent salary increase.

Cass County says it also does not agree with the Union, with regard to discussion about the Sheriff’s Office overtime policy, and Holiday time for regular full-time employees, which would allow 11 holidays instead of the previous 10, and would include Christmas Eve. The County also does not see eye-to-eye with the Union as far as Standby and on-call pay is concerned, whereas the Union proposes employees will be paid a minimum of two-hours, when called out while on standby.

There are others issues for which the two sides do not agree, including the County’s request all union Jail employees contribute more toward the cost of their insurance per month, beginning in year two of the contract. The increase would amount to $20 the second year and $40 the third year.

No date was set at the end of the Supervisor’s meeting for both sides to sit down and hold a closed session on the initial bargaining attempt, which is the next step in the negotiating process.