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Town of Hartford Highway Dept
Just how important are the employees of the highway dept in your town? When it snows are you able to make it to work? Are the roads in your town maintained to keep your car from possibly being damaged? These workers take care of the things we naturally take for granted.
The Town of Hartford Board doesn't value our Teamster brothers who take care of the roads for the residents that live there. Their contract expired in December of 2019 and they have been negotiating a contract which is now in mediation with no agreement in site.
The main sticking point seems to be language that was agreed upon in the last contract and now the town wants it out of the new contract. The guys feel the Town Supervisor wants to change their working conditions. For the men they want modest pay increases. Right now the starting pay in the neighboring towns is around $20/hr or more. Recently the town ran a $400 ad looking for help and received one application which they had to turn down because the person did not have a CDL license. They can't get anyone to work here due to the low wages. The town also raised the part-time wages to entice workers so they would be making more money per hour than the guys that work full-time. What a slap in the face!
These men always do more than what their job titles encompass. They do the mechanical repairs on the trucks to keep them running. If the town had to contract that out the cost would be extremely high. They paint the trucks to keep them looking good...they have a 2005 truck that they cannot get parts for anymore so the men make the parts themselves. They do construction work on the Town Hall when needed, recently redoing the bathroom. Why do they do it? Because they care about the town and its residents.
The guys collectively say "We are just asking for a fair contract with fair wages. The cost of living is going up and we want our wages and healthcare to be comparable to the neighboring towns."
The town needs to do the right thing by our brothers and give them a fair contract.
~Teamster 294 Solidarity!!!!
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