January 18, 2007

Nancy J. Sulok, South Bend Tribune

Hundreds of Indiana Toll Road employees will learn Friday if they still have their jobs.

Representatives of the Indiana Toll Road Concession Co. will travel up and down Interstate 80/90 tomorrow to meet with workers and deliver the news.

ITRCC has been running the highway since July, when a controversial lease agreement began between the state of Indiana and Statewide Mobility Partners. SMP is a consortium made up of Macquarie Investment Holdings of Sydney, Australia, and Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte SA of Madrid, Spain.

As part of the agreement, SMP was required to interview all existing Toll Road employees who wanted to keep their jobs.

Gov. Mitch Daniels promised that those who were not hired would be provided job opportunities elsewhere in state government.

Jane Jankowski, press secretary for the governor, said more than 80 percent of the workers asked to keep their jobs and were interviewed by ITRCC.

One of them was Veronica Niedbalski of Osceola, who has worked at the Notre Dame toll plaza for nine years.

She and some of her co-workers, she said, have more questions than answers right now.

For example, she said, if they are hired by the new company, will they receive the same pay? Will they retain their seniority and benefits?

Perhaps most important, said Niedbalski, who will turn 59 next month, what will happen to their contributions to the state pension plan?

"Everyone will have a job,'' Matt Pierce, public information officer for ITRCC, said Tuesday. "No one will be losing their job."

The Toll Road has 565 employees, he said. Those who do not stay with the Toll Road will be offered other state jobs, he said.

Workers who are vested in the state's Public Employees' Retirement Fund will keep their pensions, Pierce said. In order to be fully vested, an employee needs 10 years of service.

If a person has 10 or more years of seniority and decides to continue working for the state, he or she will retain everything, Pierce said.

But what about Niedbalski, who has only nine years?

Pierce said state legislation provides for her and other workers with less than 10 years to retain their PERF accounts.

For workers who choose to remain in their Toll Road jobs as employees of ITRCC, their PERF benefits will end, but their money will remain in PERF until they retire or roll it over into a different plan, such as a 401(k), Pierce said.

In terms of pay, Pierce said all employees will stay at their current salaries or perhaps even get raises, whether they stay with the Toll Road or move to a new job in state government.

Ditto for their accrued vacation time and other benefits.

Pierce said an employee's hire date will be the date he or she is hired by ITRCC. However, the worker will bring years of service with him or her that will be used to determine vacations or other employment-related requests.

If a worker decides to leave the Toll Road but work for another state agency, Pierce said, the state made a commitment to keep jobs "within reasonable proximity'' of the worker's home. That means no workers should have to travel more than 25 miles from their home to their job, he added.

His comments were a relief to Niedbalski, who is admittedly nervous about what she will hear Friday.

Nancy J. Sulok's columns appear on Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays. You can reach her at nsulok@sbtinfo.com, or by writing c/o South Bend Tribune, 225 W. Colfax Ave., South Bend, IN 46626, telephone (574) 235-6234.

 

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