18 months and still no contract

We have been working without a contract since Dec 31 04! The commissioners asked us to be patient and wait while they settled a couple of others, since they know we are underpaid and deserve more, but if they did our contracts first we would end up with less, ok, we voted and agreed to wait.. now all this time later (we were told we had to wait until the end of June 05) We are still without a contract, negotiations are going no where and now they are refusing to go to binding arbitration (probably because the last time they went to binding arbitration our dept got the bggest raise ever, and a fair one to boot) Our Union lawyer is seeing if they can refuse arbitration and if we can strike (that whole emergency serives, vital personel/public safety deal) We should have an answer by Thursday. What a bunch of bold faced liars the commissioners are What is really a kick in the pants, is the last time we had negotiations, we agreed to take less, and opted for a shorter contract so we wouldn't get stuck in negotiations again, we were in negotiations for "only" 11 months that time, if we only knew!!! Stupid county.. (if I don't get my shift changed in July, I have decided, job or no I am leaving, I can't keep working on such little sleep.. I will work at McDonalds if I have to in the interim, well, maybe not fast food, but you get the idea, anything is better then this! So hopefully I won't have to deal with it much longer, but I will see all the retro from the past 17 months!)

Hi Brianna!!! Believe me, it is no different here with the contract stuff. Just hang in there...it's not good to "settle" for taking less....fight the fight for what you deserve...goodness knows, it is a thankless job most of the time and you guys deserve fair compensation for the job that you do. OH YEAH...gotta love the retro checks!!! Love ya!! Paula Chicago 911 Since you are working the same hours as me, we'll have to chat/ Drop me an email ([email protected])