Pay raises for Ferguson Township public works employees part of new union contract

Nov. 12 update: Last week, Teamsters Local Union No. 764 President Ty Sees shared with the CDT that the union had approved the collective bargaining agreement with Ferguson Township, as long as the township corrected the township arborist’s rate of pay from $23.50/hour to $25.43/hour — the originally agreed upon rate.

The supervisors unanimously approved a resolution at a special meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 12 correcting that fee and finalizing the agreement.

After several months of negotiations, the Ferguson Township supervisors unanimously approved a tentative collective bargaining agreement Monday with Teamsters Local Union No. 764 that includes pay increases for public works staff.

Endorsed by both the township and the union, the union is scheduled to vote to ratify the agreement on Wednesday, according to a press release from the township. If approved, it would retroactively come into effect on Jan. 1 and will last until Dec. 31, 2027.

Only current employees working within the township’s public works department — road crew members, custodians, mechanics and arborists — are eligible for the upgrades, which includes a bump in wages that will bring the township’s pay scale to a level that’s comparable with other municipalities in the Centre Region, township manager Centrice Martin said.

“Wages were certainly an item that took some time to find consensus, and reasonably so — the incremental [wage] increases over the last decade have been reasonably low,” Martin said Monday. “There has been a disparity in our wages for over ten years, but with this CBA I’m happy to share that we will be bringing those wages for our [public works department] to competitive wages within the regional market.”

This CBA is an improvement upon the last deal the township approved in 2022, which raised the base hourly rates from $18.68 to $19.10 for the road crew, to $16.50 for custodians and from $20.11 to $22.11 for mechanics, according to a press release.

Now, following the CBA’s ratification, the wages will increase to $23.50 for the road crew, $23.50 for custodians and $26.43 for mechanics, with an additional 3% increase effective Jan. 1, 2027.

Also included in the CBA is upgrades to the employees’ voluntary overtime, holiday leave, health and welfare benefits, sick leave and grievance procedures, although the specific details of those upgrades were not explained at the meeting. The full executed agreement will be available for review after union ratification, according to a press release.

“This [CBA] is long overdue,” supervisor Omari Patterson said. “I didn’t realize how bad it was until being in the [supervisor’s] seat, sitting up here and seeing some of the data that not everybody in the public can see. It’s unfortunate, and so now we’re essentially correcting some, dare I say, sins of the past.”

Patterson thanked Martin, his fellow supervisors, the township’s staff and the teamsters for their work on the CBA.

Ty Sees, the union’s president, told the CDT Tuesday afternoon that he was grateful for the cooperative work of both the union and the township.

“We didn’t get everything we asked for, but you know, that’s negotiations work — you each start at different points and meet in the middle,” Sees said. “At the end of it all, [the public works employees] are getting a much-deserved and long-overdue pay boost.”

This story was originally published November 4, 2025 at 4:02 PM.