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About 11,000 government workers will have a new contract with two years of retroactive wage freezes, after SGEU members voted to accept a new deal three years after their old one ran out.

Members of the PS/GE sector ratified a memorandum of agreement with almost 70 per cent support, according to a web posting by the sector’s negotiating committee. It announced the results on Friday, the same day the government celebrated the “commitment and co-operation” that led to the deal.

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Both sides said the agreement provides for zeros in the first two years of the new contract, which ran out in October 2016.

That’s followed by a hike of one per cent in year three, then a combination pension and general wage increase amounting to two per cent. The tail end of the contract has two years of two-per-cent hikes. The new contract ends on Sept. 30, 2022.

Ratification votes were held across the province from Oct. 7 to Nov. 6. Some meetings were acrimonious, notably in Regina, as a dissident group of correctional officers objected to the deal as inadequate and unresponsive to their specific concerns.