Nassau County will pay $12 million less in salary this year compared to last year even after giving non-union employees a raise for the first time in three years, Comptroller George Maragos’ office said on Dec. 30.
The raises, which are based on merit, will add $3.44 million to the county’s payroll during 2015, according to Maragos’ office.
But overall spending will decline based on a reduction of 112 non-union employees over the past four years from the county’s payroll, the comptroller’s office said.
The reduction in employees, who were not covered by union contracts, is a result of employees becoming union workers, positions being eliminated and workers being laid off, Maragos’ office said.
Maragos said the increases for non-union employees generally followed a Nov. 20 memo in which he recommended 8 percent raises to ensure fairness between union and non-union employees.
“I am pleased to see that the non-union employee salary increases followed guidelines to ensure parity and fairness with union employees and were based on merit,” Maragos said in a statement. “The elected officials struck a good balance between fiscal responsibility and the need to retain and motivate talented employees who were asked to take on an increased work load during the three-year wage freeze and decrease in employee head count.”
The raises, according to Maragos, were lower than those negotiated with CSEA and police union employees who received a 7.7 percent and 14.3 percent increase respectively.
Nearly half of the raises given were by the county District Attorney’s Office, which averaged 10.1 percent in increases at a cost of $1,544,000.
The average increase across other elected offices is 6 percent, according to Maragos’ office.
