Members of Sign, Screen and Display Local 880 have ratified a three-year commercial sign contract providing annual increases of nearly 5 percent. The agreement provides increases in wages and benefits of $1 an hour this year, then $1.25 an hour in each 2007 and 2008, said business agent Paul Richards. Most of that increase will go on members? paychecks, he said, as the local continues to reap the benefits of the ?composite? health insurance premiums it implemented several years ago.

Under this approach, members pay the same premium regardless of whether they have single, two-person or family coverage, Richards said.

As a result, members have had to increase their contribution to health insurance only 11 cents an hour total over the past three years ? a result he called phenomenal.

The contract covers about 100 members at more than a dozen sign shops in the seven-county metro area. Last year, after going four months past expiration, members accepted a one-year contract.

Adapted from The Union Advocate, the official newspaper of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly.E-mail The Advocate:advocate@stpaulunions.org"