Chelsea settled two union contracts this year, and they follow the same pattern: 3 percent, 3 percent, 3 percent. The clerical workers got a one-time $1,000 bump on top. The managers got a $225-a-month car allowance.
SEIU Local 888
The first agreement covers the city’s clerical, inspector, maintenance and custodial employees, represented by SEIU Local 888. The memorandum of agreement was signed February 11 and runs from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2029, with 3 percent raises in each of the three years and a one-time $1,000 addition to base pay. The City Manager’s request put the cost at about $690,000 over the three years. The council referred it to Ways and Means on March 2 and approved it.
United Steelworkers Local 9427
The second covers the city’s management-level employees, who are represented by United Steelworkers Local 9427. The agreement was signed June 11 and runs the same three years, with the same 3 percent annual raises, at a cost of about $1.02 million. It adds a new $225-a-month car allowance, which is $2,700 a year per eligible employee, and which the council’s budget summary lists among the personnel cost drivers in the departments where managers sit.
The pattern
Three percent a year for three years is a settlement, not a windfall. It runs slightly ahead of the current inflation rate and behind what the city’s health insurance costs are rising, which was $1.05 million in one year. What it does is set the pattern for the contracts still open. Police and fire, the two largest bargaining units and the ones with the most overtime exposure, have not come to the council this year. When they do, 3-3-3 is the number they will be measured against, and the car allowance for managers is the kind of add-on that other units notice.
The same packet that carried the SEIU agreement carried a new policy of annual performance reviews for union employees. The memo is careful to wall the reviews off from discipline and promotion, which is what made them acceptable to the union. Whether reviews that cannot affect pay or rank change anything is a question for the second year of the contract.