After months of negotiations, Mercer County Commissioners are expected today to ratify a three-year contract with guards at the Mercer County Jail.

The contract calls for a 3 percent yearly raise and "basically is a mirror of what happened three years ago," Commissioner Olivia M. Lazor said Wednesday night.

The contract is retroactive to Jan. 1 and runs through Dec. 31, 2005. The union has been working under the terms of its previous contract.

The guards are represented by Teamsters Local 250. Local president Doug Robbins could not be reached for comment.

One of the major sticking points in the negotiations was the issue of requiring union members to pay a share of their health-care premiums, Mrs. Lazor said.

"We tried desperately to negotiate some features in the contract that would bring all of the unions basically to parity," Mrs. Lazor said. "Other (county) union contracts have employees participating in the health-care share of their premiums."

Negotiating committee chairman Bill Boyle, the county personnel director, said the county has five different contracts, three of them for steelworkers, a fourth for the Teamsters and a fifth for the social services union. And all but the Teamsters, who Boyle said comprise 10 percent of employees in the county's health-care plan, pay a share of their health-care premiums, as do all of the nonunion employees.

"This was the second contract that the union voted on," Boyle said.

Boyle said the first proposal, which was voted on about a month ago and was turned down by the union, included a health-care contribution "and would have been more expensive to the county, based on wages and longevity, even with the offset of a health-care contribution."

"It still would have cost the county more than the one they finally ratified," Boyle said.

Mrs. Lazor said since "jail guards do not strike, the only options were either mediation and arbitration." In this case, a state mediator was utilized

She said the sides began negotiating before the previous contract expired on Dec. 31 and "had a mediator in there the entire time."

But they "were unable to accomplish that goal" of getting the union to pay a share of its health-care premium, which Mrs. Lazor said county employees represented by the United Steelworkers and social services unions do.

"I thought we made some offers that were very fair and would have been very good for the employees," she said. "And I don't understand why they didn't see it."

In the end, Mrs. Lazor said, "It was the best contract we were able to negotiate."