Now why has it taken until now for an elected representative to come up with this plan? Not one has looked at the way government can be run more effeciently, our County Legislators may say they are but what they say and do is completely opposite. They pander to the people while running for re-election and turn their backs once re-elected.

This is why his businesses have done so well. It is well past time someone in government looked out for we taxPAYERS. This is why Chris Collins, and not the “union-puppet”, democrat Jim Keane was OVERWHELMINGLY elected Erie County Executive. WAY TO GO CHRIS !!!!

County Executive Chris Collins aims for large savings in labor costs.

Erie County Executive Chris Collins has told his managers to hire “regular part-time” workers over full-timers as much as possible.

Regular part-time employees work slightly fewer hours in a week, but their paid time off is half that of a full-time, rank-and-file employee.

Because the so-called RPT works more hours each year, Collins estimates the government can derive a $700,000 annual benefit for the taxpayers of Erie County by filling all jobs that open up with an RPT.

Regular part-timers can work up to 39 hours a week at the same hourly rate as full time employees, and they have union protection. But they earn half the holiday pay and half the vacation, sick leave and personal leave.

RPTs still collect fully paid health insurance for themselves and their families, unlike an even lesser class of part timers; those working fewer than 20 hours collect no health benefits and no paid leave.

“An RPT employee delivers better value to the taxpayer,” Collins said Wednesday, stressing that he will not change the status of any current worker. “It is my intention that the vast majority of our new hires be RPT.”

Regular part-time workers have been used for years throughout county government and at Erie County Medical Center. But Collins wants to bring the use of RPTs to a new level. Hiring them should be the norm and hiring full-timers the exception, he said.

“It’s the time-off provisions that are embedded in some of the county’s employment practices that are making us noncompetitive and need to be dealt with”. he said.

Collins imposed his wish at a meeting of his high-level commissioners last week and later said he hopes the county’s elected department heads — the county clerk, district attorney, comptroller and sheriff — try to do the same with their new hires.

He said he does not need County Legislature approval to start offering vacancies as regular part time, even if they were budgeted at full time.

“The sooner we start this process, the sooner we start saving the taxpayers money,” he said.
Leaders of the white-collar and blue-collar unions, while not crazy about his policy, acknowledged that there is little they can do. Their contracts with Erie County have lapsed, and the terms that continue under New York’s Taylor Law are limited to those spelled out in the most recent pacts.

“Maybe he should hire his commissioners that way, too,” said Joan Bender, president of Local 815, Civil Service Employees Association, which represents about 4,200 county workers.
In his roster of appointed department heads and top officials, Collins designates no one as a 39-hour-a-week part-timer. But those appointees pay 15 percent of the cost of their health insurance, and their paid time off is far less generous than a unionized full-timer’s, he said.
Bender and John Orlando, head of the blue-collar Local 1095, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said it would be fair to increase the use of RPTs if Collins intended to work them just 20 hours a week. But the union leaders said it’s wrong to use them 39 hours a week while keeping their time-off benefits at half a full-time worker’s.
Collins says job applicants will still get fine benefits. They can get five days of fully paid vacation in each of their first two years, not 10 like unionized full-time employees; 7.5 sick days, not the 15 full-time employees receive, and a paid one-half hour lunch, not an hour paid one; and half the pay when they take a holiday off, not full pay as full-time employees get.
“This is America, and they will make the decision of whether they will take that job or not,” Collins said. “We will be saving the taxpayers money, they will get time off that more closely mirrors the private sector, and it is still a very nice benefits package.”

Some county officials familiar with the policy speculated that Collins might be laying down a challenge for the unions as they return to the negotiating table some time this year. Reaching a new generation of contracts is roundly considered the top challenge facing the new county executive.
Collins, who ran for office as a businessman, says he is willing to award cost-of-living raises if the unions change some of their work rules to save tax dollars.

Will the unions be able to bargain away this RPT initiative? he was asked Wednesday.
“You can bargain for anything,” Collins said.

mspina@buffnews.com