Orchard Park’s white-collar workers and the town have agreed on a contract that town officials say they hope will become the pattern for other unions.

The four-year agreement, approved at Wednesday’s Town Board meeting, eliminates a choice of several health insurance plans, including the expensive traditional BlueCross BlueShield, and places the workers in a single point of service plan.

Most of the concessions in the contract will affect future employees. It requires new hires to pay 20 percent of their health and dental insurance premiums, caps their vacation at four weeks instead of five and reduces personal leave and longevity, as well as sick-day accumulation from 1.5 days per month to one day per month.

In exchange, employees are guaranteed raises of 3 percent a year, although in the fourth year of the contract, the raise will be given in two installments.

Supervisor Janis Colarusso praised Dave Holland, president of the Civil Service Employees Association white-collar unit.

“We not only talked about what the employees wanted to see in their contract, we also talked about what was best for the taxpayers of this town,” she said.

“Its really changing the culture in many ways, getting everybody to see both sides and come to a centrist position for everybody’s benefit,” Councilman David Kaczor said.

For a number of year, the Town Board has tried to get a handle on health insurance costs. Four years ago, unions filed grievances after the town tried to impose changes in insurance coverage, and this year’s budget included no money for raises without concessions in benefits.

“This move will also save the town many thousands of dollars as new employees in the next decade take the place of the employees that will retire,” Colarusso said.

She said more than 30 town employees will be eligible to retire in the next 10 years.

“It was time to re-engineer the town’s compensation system,” said Sean Beiter, the town’s labor attorney.

Town officials said that they did not know how much would be saved moving to the single insurance plan but that it would be sizable, particularly if all town employees got on the same plan.

Union members approved the contract Tuesday, Colarusso said.

It is retroactive to Jan. 1.