The Essex County library strike is over after 231 days.
CUPE Local 2974 and the Essex County Library Board have agreed on a deal.
The four-year deal will allow library workers to receive a 2% annual pay increase in addition to a $3,000 signing bonus for librarians.
Employees will now have third party insurance for short and long-term disability.
All employees will receive up to 60 annual hours of sick time — prorated for part-time staff. Any hours unused will be payed out at the end of the year and anyone not at work due to injury or sickness will have to use the provided short-term disability as of the third day. However, current employees will have up to 520-hours of bankable sick time that can be built back up to the cap once hours are used. This provision will be phased out as the staff retires or leaves the Essex County Library as the provision won't be offered to new hires.
Library Board Chair Richard Meloche says it will take some time for things to return back to normal. He says residents of Essex County have been anticipating a deal for quite some time.
"We are very happy that we were able to finally get a settlement because CUPE pointed out very well that our patrons want our libraries back," says Meloche. "We knew that, we were hearing that from people as well, but it takes two sides to come to an agreement in a contract and we finally got that."
Meloche says the new deal will benefit both part-time and full-time workers.
"They all have access to short term disability, they all have the option to buy into benefits, they have life insurance like everybody else," says Meloche. "The short-term disability is self-funded for anybody under 15 hours a week."
He says there will be outside help for workers having difficulty re-adjusting to their job.
"We are going to have some professionals come in to help us work through any problems we may have," says Meloche. " We want to try and give our employees an opportunity to ease back into their jobs. If anybody is having issues, we will have somebody to help ease them back into their position."
Essex County libraries will be open to the public again starting Thursday.