Flint supervisors ratify a contract the city has not priced, and council still has to vote

FLINT — Supervisors who work for the City of Flint have voted to accept a new contract, and the city has not said what it pays them. AFSCME Local 1799 President Don Lewis told ABC12 that nearly 90 percent of members voted yes. “We got a fair contract,” he said. The agreement does not start until the Flint City Council approves it.

Ricardo Quintanilla’s story is explicit about the hole. The city has not released the length of the deal, the wage increases, or the other changes. Mayor Sheldon Neeley said working with bargaining units “is essential to keeping city government running effectively.” He did not attach a dollar figure to that sentence. A reader who wants the raise, the years, or the health-care change will not find them in the story, because the city had not put them out.

What is on paper from earlier rounds is the calendar, not this deal’s price. The previous full contract ran through June 2024. A wage agreement after that stayed in effect through June 2025 and raised pay in eight supervisory classifications. Local 1799 represents those supervisors. This vote is the membership’s ratification of a tentative agreement. It is not the council’s vote, and it is not a paycheck.

What “nearly 90 percent” does not say

Lewis’s figure is the share of members who voted yes, not a headcount of the local and not a count of ballots. The story does not say how many supervisors are in 1799, how many cast a ballot, or whether the vote was in person. “Overwhelmingly,” the word in the lead, is the station’s summary of that 90 percent. The eight classifications are the subject of the old wage agreement, not a list of titles in the new one.

The step that is left

Council approval is the remaining gate. Until that vote, Neeley’s partnership language and Lewis’s “fair contract” are the two descriptions anyone outside the bargaining room has. Neither one is a term sheet. If the council amends or rejects the deal, the 90 percent vote is the union’s position, not the city’s final word. The June 2024 date is the end of the last full contract. The June 2025 date is the end of the wage-only deal that followed it, the one that covered eight classifications. This ratification does not say whether those eight titles, or a different set, are in the new agreement.

The photograph is the municipal center. It is not the room where the members voted.

Sources:
ABC12, Ricardo Quintanilla, “Flint supervisors ratify new contract agreement with city,” Nov. 12, 2026, https://www.abc12.com/news/local/flint-supervisors-ratify-new-contract-agreement-with-city/article_b7700b05-ee28-49ef-8dfc-6ad64082c7e2.html
Photo: WeaponizingArchitecture, “Flint, Michigan Municipal Center.jpg”, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFlint%2C_Michigan_Municipal_Center.jpg

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Tags: Flint · AFSCME · City Council · Labor