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Workers with one of the state’s largest labor unions on Sunday voted to approve terms of a new contract, averting a potential strike that could have halted work at sites from Portland to Eugene.

Plumbers & Steamfitters Local 290, which has more than 4,000 members throughout Oregon, Southwest Washington and Northern California, to approve a two-year contract with the Plumbing and Mechanical Contractors Association. It represents more than 250 plumbing and mechanical contractors in the region.

The prevailing wage rate for most Oregon counties will increase by $2.75 per hour for each of the next two years.

“I think both sides probably aren’t satisfied,” said Frank Wall, PMCA’s executive director. “When both sides aren’t satisfied, it’s probably a good contract.”

Labor and management representatives disagreed over prospects, including the expected drawdown at Intel‘s D1X expansion in Hillsboro. Contractors believed that with work slowing, increasing wages would make landing work significantly more difficult, Wall said.

Labor reps believed the opposite. Local 290’s business manager, Al Shropshire, disputed PMCA’s contention that a slowdown of work at Intel would lead to fewer profits and man-hours in 2015.

“We believe you are making record profits,” Shropshire said, according to March 25 meeting minutes. He declined to comment on the results of the vote.

Other projects, such as the state capitol renovation and Oregon Health & Science University and Portland Community College construction, would contribute to “lots of work coming up,” Shropshire said in the minutes.

The two sides, who have met 17 times since mid-January, were far apart last month. The PMCA’s proposal at the time – raising wages by $1.40 an hour for two years and $1.50 an hour over the third year – was rejected nearly unanimously by union members at a March 30 meeting. They then authorized a strike in the event of a breakdown in negotiations.

Labor reps had sought a $3.50 an hour raise over that same time period, down from an initial request of $4.25 an hour, according to the minutes.

Both sides agreed April 4 to a cooling-off period that ultimately generated an agreement last week.

Many contractors had prepared for a potential work stoppage.

“We notified our contractors to get dual gates that would have been set up so that they could continue working,” said Robin Edgar, labor relations manager for Associated General Contractors‘ Oregon-Columbia chapter.

AGC, which negotiates with five major trades, including teamsters and carpenters’ unions, had a no-strike, no-lockout clause in its contracts; sympathy strikes would be in violation, Edgar said.

“We notified them – this was not our fight and to report to work,” she said.

Wall acknowledged that the relationship between labor and management interests has been marked by distrust over the past several years.

As part of the negotiations, the PMCA and Local 290 will go through a two-year process of relationship building before the new contract expires March 31, 2016. Both sides agreed to hire a facilitator, Richard Barnes, who will lead a healing process for future negotiations, Wall said.

Barnes, principal of Lawrenceville, Ga.-based C. Richard Barnes and Associates LLC, has settled labor and management disputes across the country.

“What’s happened in the negotiations is both sides go to the table with skepticism and lack of trust,” Wall said. “Richard Barnes teaches you how to listen to each other.”