More than 9,000 blue-collar workers for the state and counties have a new four-year contract that their union says acknowledges the sacrifices they made during tough budgeting times.

"This certainly recognizes and reflects the individual hardships and family hardships that employees in this bargaining unit endured over the past four years," Dayton Na­kane­lua, state director of the United Public Workers, told members of Unit 1 who attended a contract signing ceremony in the Governor’s Office on Monday.

"We’ve gone through furloughs," Na­kane­lua added. "We’ve gone through directed leaves without pay because employees in this unit saw that in order to deal with the state and the counties’ financial and fiscal crises that they needed to be part of the solution, and for the past four years, they have been."

Nakanelua joined Gov. Neil Abercrombie and three of the state’s county mayors in praising the Unit 1 members, many of whom work in the Department of Education, at the University of Hawaii, in the state Judiciary and in the Hawaii health care system.

"I think it’s very important for everyone to understand that this negotiation was very, very critical for those of us who are in the administration," Maui Mayor Alan Ara­kawa said. "It’s very critical for all of us to be able to have people on the ground who want to be able to work to make life better for people in the community.

"This contract tells them that we believe in them and that we trust in what they do and we are willing to be able to give them a pay scale that is significant enough to make them feel that the jobs that they’re doing have importance."

The four-year contract includes consecutive 2 percent pay raises beginning Oct. 1, and thereafter every April 1 and Oct. 1 for the duration of the contract.

As with other recent agreements with the Hawaii Government Employees Association Units 2, 3, 4 and 8, and the Hawaii State Teachers Association, UPW workers will receive raises on top of the restoration of 5 percent pay cuts enacted in recent years to help the state government close a sizable gap in its budget.

The agreement requires the employer to pay 60 percent of health benefit with the employee responsible for 40 percent. The contribution previously had been split evenly between employer and employee.

Abercrombie said negotiators, guided by mediator Joyce Najita, director of the UH-Manoa Industrial Relations Center, were able to reconfigure the basic agreements with regard to the health care benefits so the employers would foot 60 percent of premiums as in the years before the financial crunch hit.

"We think that’s fair. We always wanted to do that," Abercrombie said. "The only reason we went to 50-50 at all in the first place is to attack the deficit."

Nakanelua said the contract, which was ratified by 96.7 percent of the unit members who voted, "brings stability to their future for the next four years."

Abercrombie did not have an estimate as to how much the contract would cost in the state’s two-year budget that the Legislature is expected to approve this week as it wraps up work today and Thursday for the 2013 session.

He said the deal was ratified in time to be included in the budget that begins at the start of the fiscal year, July 1.

"The Legislature and the negotiators have exchanged numbers, and when they get to the final numbers, we’ll make them available," Abercrombie said. "The (House) Finance Committee, the (Senate) Ways and Means Committee and the negotiators are content that we’re able to accommodate the financing of the collective bargaining agreement."

Sen. David Ige, chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, did not immediately return a telephone message left after hours at his office.

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