The newly reorganized Lehigh County Board of Commissioners led by Commissioner President Amy Zanelli quickly went through a short agenda Jan. 8.

One of its first acts was to start a rollback of the method the previous Republican led board adopted which put part-time commissioners in the negotiating room with the professional staffers as they negotiated labor contracts.

The weakness of that system was highlighted last year when negotiations with the service workers union dragged out for over a year while workers went without a contract. Part of the problem, according to testimony from workers at various meetings last year, was that frequently members of the board of commissioners assigned as negotiators would not show up at the business meetings to negotiate. Many of the commissioners have full-time careers in businesses or other areas.

Getting its first reading (final vote will be at the next regular meeting) was a bill that designates the county executive as the agent of the board of commissioners for labor relations and for establishing a policy for conduct of collective bargaining.

This means the county executive will do the labor negotiating and the commissioners will then approve or disapprove of the executive’s recommendations.

Frank Gerlach, a shop steward for Local 668 of the Service Employees International Union, said in a post-meeting interview “the previous process did not work properly.”

“It’s not a matter of who you’re negotiating with, it’s how it’s done,” Gerlach said. “With this spirit of cooperation that’s going on right now between the board and the executive – any transparency between them and us we feel that it is best for all including employees, community, and taxpayers – there should be a collaboration and that’s how we hope it will be moving forward.”

Also, in a post-meeting interview, The Press asked Board President Amy Zanelli if she had any specific goals while the board of commissioners is under her leadership.

“My most important goal for this year is to take a hard look at our policies and see where we have gone wrong,” Zanelli said. “I think that is a duty of leaders to look at where they have done well, where they can improve and to admit the mistakes they have made and move on to make the process better for everyone involved. That is my priority. We are on our way to changing the way we negotiate our labor contracts. That should get passed next week. I’m looking forward to trying to make the whole process smoother, more transparent and more ethical.”