DANVILLE – About 300 unionized Vermilion County employees have settled for about a 1 percent wage increase for one year, with options to renegotiate wages in future years of their contract.

The deal gives county officials time to work through the financial strain caused by the state's fiscal crisis.

The workers, who make up almost half of the county's 625 employees, are represented by two separate bargaining units of the Illinois Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 21. One group is the judicial workers, including circuit clerk and probation workers and bailiffs. The other group is the nonjudicial workers, which includes employees in the state's attorney's office, Vermilion Manor Nursing Home, health department, animal regulation and all the offices in the courthouse annex.

The two groups ratified the proposed contract agreements, which are retroactive to December 2009, by a slim margin on May 21, according to Vickie Burroughs, business representative for IBEW Local 21.

The reason the deal passed, she said, is that the employees will at least have a little bit of a wage increase retroactive to December with the option of negotiating more in the future.

"That's as much as we could get from the county. They were not willing to go more," she said.

The county board's finance committee approved the agreements Tuesday night.

The full county board will vote this Tuesday on the three-year contracts, which contain minimal changes and only a one-year agreement on financials, including wages and insurance.