Columbia Borough officials complained Dec. 8 about contract negotiations with union representatives of nonuniformed employees.

Councilmembers Vern Detz and Mary Wickenheiser and Norm Meiskey, borough manager, vented their frustration with Pennsylvania Social Services Union 668, which represents 25 employees like clerks, secretaries and members of the road crew.

Detz pointed to the wages and benefits, which include 13 paid holidays per year and reimbursement of $9 health insurance co-payments.

"Who is getting those kinds of benefits anymore? I'm looking forward to 2009 when, hopefully, we'll get this thing settled," Detz said.

"We're doing these negotiations in good faith, but the union just isn't budging," he said. "All I can say is … be thankful for what you have."

Meiskey said "in the private sector, benefits like these just don't happen. The union has to meet us in the middle."

Allie Samsel, a business agent for Local 668, said the contract between the borough and union expired Dec. 31, 2007. While negotiations have been under way for a new five-year contract that would last through 2014, both sides have been holding to the terms of the old contract in order to avoid a strike, she said.

"We are willing to meet the borough in the middle, but they're asking us to make major concessions," Samsel said Thursday. "If we agree to this, our people would lose money over the life of this five-year contract. We're talking about major losses in the thousands of dollars."

A development in negotiations occurred in August when the state supplied a neutral person to help move the talks forward.

Wickenheiser said Dec. 8 "the borough is not the one who requested a fact finder."

Samsel said the union did not request a fact-finder, either, but that the request was made by a mediator supplied by the Harrisburg-based State Bureau of Mediation. The role of the fact finder, Samsel said, was to "investigate the borough's finances" to make sure that "money was available."

She said, "All we're asking for with this is fair bargaining. We're talking about people who have to get up at 3 a.m. and go out in the middle of the night to plow the streets, and then get up and go to work the next morning.

"We just want to see things ironed out," she said.