WHIDBEY NEWS TIMES: After 5 years, jail deputies get contract with wage hikes

Jessie Stensland reports:

Corrections deputies who work in the Island County jail have a contract for the first time in five years, but the resolution wasn’t without controversy.

Negotiations between the county’s team and the guild resulted in binding arbitration last year. The arbitrator awarded the corrections deputies significant retroactive wages increases, though not as much as the guild had requested.

Here is a link to the video recording of the meeting and the meeting agenda. The agenda has links to the point in the video at which each part of the agenda occurred. This discussion starts at the 27:48 mark of the video, and lasts for approximately eight minutes.

They Said It

Commissioner Jill Johnson said she found fault with an arbitration process that creates “favoritism,” not with the work of corrections deputies. She said the level of wage increase is not sustainable.

“This is not the board of county commissioners saying this group is more special than others,” she said. “This is the state of Washington regulations and laws that allow certain groups to use binding arbitration and then obligate us to accept contract terms that we would not agree to with other unions.”

Island County Sheriff Rick Felici also reacted to the letter, saying that claims made about the safety of the jail are absolutely false. While the jail is part of his office, he wasn’t involved in the contract negotiations.

“We do not have an unsafe jail,” he said. “In fact, I would say we have one of the safest jails in the state.”

Commissioner Melanie Bacon said her only disappointment with the process was that contract only extends to July* 31. “And then we have to start all over again,” she said.

* Ed. Note: The News-Times’ story quotes Commissioner Bacon as having said July 31. The video shows the commissioner saying December 31.