Monday, June 27, 2011
BREAKING NEWS: Oakland Strikes Deals with Four Major City Unions
Breaking News / Politics Robert Gammon — Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 3:00 PM
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and the city council have reached tentative agreements with four public-employee unions that will save the city about $28 million a year, union officials said on Monday. The deals are with the city's police and fire unions and with Professional & Technical Engineers Local 21 and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245. Each has agreed to concessions of 9 percent, although each has chosen to structure the givebacks differently, union officials said.
The tentative agreements are subject to a vote by each union's rank-and-file membership. Levin said his union would be voting on it tomorrow. The city council has scheduled a special budget session tomorrow night.
Local 21's tentative agreement calls for an extension of the twelve unpaid furlough days that city workers have taken in the past few years, plus another eight "floating" unpaid days that would be used at each employee's discretion and thus would not force the city to close for business. Local 21 also agreed to forgo merit raises for the next two years.
The Oakland police union, meanwhile, has finally agreed to pay 9 percent of its pension plan, a concession that the union refused to make last year and resulted in the lay off of eighty cops. Firefighters have agreed to 9 percent compensation cuts. The firefighters' union told the Chronicle late last week that its concessions would save the city about $9.5 million a year.
The only major city union that has not reached a tentative agreement yet is SEIU Local 1021. If that union strikes a deal with the city as well, then the total savings from the five union deals would be about $40 million for all of the city's various funds. "Hopefully, they're close," Levin said, referring to 1021.
Update 3:15 p.m.: Mayor Quan said that the city has reached a tentative agreement with SEIU Local 1021 as well. "All that is left is clean-up language," she said.
As for the tentative deals, she said, "We've been moving steadily with all of the unions for a while now, and all of them are in various stages of ratification and clean-up language. I'm very optimistic."
Comments (10)
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The best thing would be to get rid of public employee unions as they are nothing but a giant conspiracy against the public who involuntarily pay for them. They think their jobs are an entitlement and the politicians are betting that you will be stupid enough to pay more taxes for less services with the corollary assumption that only government can provide these services.
So a coercive, inefficient monopoly rules and we are supposed to be grateful ?
C'mon, sheeple, let's wake up.
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ces, employee furlough's are result of the collective bargaining process. Management can't force wage concessions on unions. In order to save money, they have two routes -- they can lay off the more junior employees or "spread the pain" and force all employee's to take unpaid days off by shutting down operations. Both are within management's perogative to determine the level of service.
Management/elected officials would prefer wage concessions, but can't force them. They are loathe to lay employees off. It's not a pleasant thing to do. So, shutting down business one day a month is their second choice.
The unions traditionally will make noise about it, but prefer layoffs. Seniority is it. I got mine. Too bad for you. They are really loathe to make wage concessions. Once you give it up, it's tough to get it back. So, their second choice is also the shutdowns. They do give up money, but at least they get a day off out of the deal.
The two sides' number one choices are at odds, but they have the same number two choice. From the viewpoint of the service demanding citizen, which is better -- shutdowns or layoffs? Theoretically, the City would have to reduce more man hours (or person hours, if you prefer the politically correct term) through junior employee layoffs, because those employees are generally paid less. The greater the man hour reduction, the greater the service reduction. The cynical among us might also suggest that the younger, more junior employees also probably do more work than the old-timers, which means an even greater impact from layoffs.
So, it appears, the service-demanding taxpayer is getting his or her second choice, too. Hmmm. Compromise just never feels good.
CES: I see it as a double loss. Once to the citizens of Oakland for a loss of services AND loss of pay to the city employee. Who wins in that kind of a scenario?
Employee furloughs are a concession from the taxpayers, not from the unions. They get a day off, we get less service. Or is there something wrong with my reasoning?
It's a sad day when a City like Oakland can do better than the Governor of California Jerry Brown.
Kudos to all the public workers unions for their good will, and understanding that ultimately it is the citizens and taxpayers of Oakland who are paying their wages and who stand to lose the most if all of their services get cut.
This is great news. Now all we have to do is find $45 million a year to pay back our PFRS pension debt, which we can no longer reasonably bond, due to a recent downgrading of our bond rating. And of course we need to figure out how to plug the gaping hole that will be blown in our budget when redevelopment is killed or cut in half in Sacramento.
Also, any answers on what the unions got in return for these concessions? Were there any no-layoff guarantees? Any other bargains that didn't make it into this article? 'cause if there are guarantees against layoffs, and if the budget situation does get worse due to what I mentioned above, Oakland won't have any flexibility to wiggle out of the next deficit crisis.
Kudos and thanks to Bob for his up-to-the-minute reporting on this and other stuff. I now look to the Express first for breaking news. Which is pretty ironic, if you think about it. :)
"The firefighters' union told the Chronicle late last week that its concessions would save the city about $9.5 million a year."
The City put rolling fire station closures into effect in 2003. This measure was presented as a $3 million budget savings. The City subsequently agreed to full staffing again (in a backroom IdF deal). When Measure Y was drafted in 2004, $4 million in funding to pay for the full staffing was included (a budget measure that saved $3 million somehow cost $4 million to reinstate, a year later).
Now, the taxpayers are paying $4 million to fund a service they always had (before this budget shell game started), but the service has gone away. Pay more for less service. It's the City of Oakland way. It will be interesting to see what else makes up the $9.5 million in purported savings. One must wonder what price tag was put on the rolling closures.
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