UKIAH (MNG) ? Employees wearing purple and waving signs lined both sides of State Street in front of the Ukiah courthouse on Monday just before 1 p.m., when the union planned a countywide walk-out to bring public attention to the issues it is raising with the negotiation process.
“They”re not bargaining; they”re giving us artificial deadlines and saying, take it or leave it,”” said organizer Christal Padilla, a practice she said is illegal. That, and other practices the union claims is unfair, is the subject of the lawsuit.
The union claims it had a hand-shake agreement with county negotiators in July that would have moved represented workers to a 36-hour, full-time work week.
The union”s members voted in favor or the agreement, but then the county withdrew the offer, saying more details needed to be discussed, according to Padilla.
Mendocino County CEO Carmel Angelo”s office issued a statement from the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors on Friday saying the four-day work week was off the table because the union had failed to approve the agreement in by Sept. 2.
The county then offered a 15-percent wage cut instead and gave the union until 5 p.m. on Monday to accept it.
The agreement would be good until Sept. 30, 2012, create a new retirement tier for new hires, change language concerning on-the-job injuries and add language regarding inspection of personnel files and disciplinary action definitions, according to Mendocino County”s statement.
Mendocino County has a collective bargaining process it must follow, according to the county”s statement. Angelo said a closed-door meeting regarding negotiations with SEIU is scheduled today, at which time the board can give direction to its negotiators.
SEIU organizers say union members are planning to speak to the Board of Supervisors during that meeting, and possibly to protest outside.
Talk of striking isn”t off the table, according to Padilla, depending on what union leaders decide after speaking to the board.
The union, which represents about 700 county employees, called on workers in Ukiah, Willits and Fort Bragg to walk out of county offices at 12:50 p.m. (“10-to-one,” as the local SEIU chapter often calls itself). Workers rallied in their respective cities to protest what the union and the lawsuit, calls unfair labor practices and to draw public attention to the workers” plights.
Padilla said the union offered its own 36-hour work week proposal that would give the county the concessions it wants, but would keep the workers as full-time employees, rather than making them permanent, part-time employees.
Padilla said as of 1 p.m. Monday, the county had rejected the offer.
“SEIU workers tend to be younger than the management group; there”s a lot of single mothers; they”re people with children who have to pay child care; they make considerably less money,” said SEIU negotiator Pam Partee. “The reason we supported the four-day work week, with the 36 hours, is so people … would have time to get a second job, because they would need that to support the reduction in pay and secondly, those that are on a five-day work week now would go to a four-day and they could drop that extra day for childcare.”
Tess O”Connell, who works 32 hours a week, said a proposal to cut hours by 10 percent would reduce her work week to 28.8 hours, making her a part-time employee and therefore ineligible for retirement.
O”Connell works in the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program of the Mendocino County”s Public Health Division and has worked for the county for 20 years.
The wage reduction would cut $600 out of her monthly income, she said and raise the cost of health care for her family.
Health and Human Services, Child Services Division worker Paula Burns-Heron said the cut would be “devastating.”
“The prices of everything are going up, and if our wages go down, that makes us not able to support the local economy,” Burns-Heron said. “And I believe in doing that; I believe in shopping here.”
