Cry for Help from Our City Workers
During the summer of 2021, the Berkeley Community Services Unit and Part Time Recreation Leaders Association chapter of SEIU Local 1021 was one of several union chapters who renegotiated their contract with the City Manager’s office. Thanks to non-agenda public commenters at the Council Meeting on February 8th, the community and council heard directly from city workers that these contracts were not being honored.
The City Manager and her deputy repeated multiple times that they were all “working extremely hard,” made excuses as to why all of the clauses in the contracts had yet to be implemented and assured those listening that they would adhere to the provisions in the contracts. Something smelled foul, so we looked into it.
According to member-leaders of SEIU Local 1021, Andrea Mullarkey and Rebecca Milliken, employee morale is low. Many employees are still reeling from the “brutal” experience from last summer’s contract negotiations when the city signed a hard won contract only to have key provisions ignored. Workers assumed the city would make good on the contract they agreed to; instead, workers have spent considerable amounts of their personal time in an ongoing struggle with city management. Two critical items in the contract, in particular, highlight the city’s tactics of shortchanging their employees through stonewalling, foot dragging, and seeming ineptitude.
The first item that wasn’t implemented as intended was an increase to the existing $20/month commuter benefit to $80/month. Milliken and many others were excited to promote this additional sustainable transit benefit to their co-workers and encourage them to bike, BART, walk or bus to work. The increased benefit was due to go into effect in August. It never did. According to Milliken, “Employees were proactive and consistently approached the city collaboratively.” Months went by and still no increased commuter benefit in their paychecks.
Frustrated and bewildered with the lack of action from the city, employees finally filed a grievance. That got the attention of city management. The city then attempted to roll out the new commuter benefit, but the roll out was botched. No employees received the full proper benefit; some received a partial benefit and yet others received no benefit at all though are being taxed as if they did.
Another, even more critical item that wasn’t implemented as agreed upon was the reduction to worker contributions to their pensions. Employees hired since 2013, known as PEPRA workers, have paid higher percentages into their pension funds than employees hired before 2013. It’s known as the PEPRA inequity. Milliken, a PEPRA worker, said that 15.75% of her paycheck goes to CalPERS, the agency that manages pensions for government employees. Last summer’s agreement reduces the inequity. It stipulates that 8% of the pension contributions for PEPRA workers will be eliminated over the course of three years. The first 3% decrease was to occur as soon as was administratively feasible and no later than the first full pay period in January 2022. Well, January came and went without a decrease in PEPRA contributions.
As mentioned, since last summer the union and city management have met in collaborative meetings. During these sessions, workers asked about the progress of PEPRA’s implementation. Workers even provided the City Manager with the fact sheet from the CalPERS website that clearly describes the process of amending a contract.
The city had almost 6 months to execute this clause and failed. This has eroded the trust and morale of many workers. “We could’ve been bargaining for raises last summer, we didn’t, we bargained for equity and now the city is withholding it from workers,” says Mullarkey.
The CalPERS website states that a contract change will take a minimum of 90 days to administer. Knowing that the January deadline would be missed, the union filed a compensation grievance in November. The city did not respond to that grievance and so it moved directly to the appeal stage. A hearing was scheduled for February 1, but that same day, the city canceled. Despite the fact that all of the stipulations for implementing the PEPRA step down are delineated in last summer’s contract, the city, by not responding, is forcing the issue to arbitration. “The city doesn’t want to sit down with us to resolve this, outside of some legalistic environment; it’s mind boggling,” said Mullarkey.
“Workers have bent over backward trying to solve these issues with and for the city. The disrespect experienced by workers and refusal to honor the contracts is driving a massive amount of vacancies across the city. Morale is abysmal and retention rates reflect that,” said Mullarkey.
Last summer, while the union was represented by their own non-lawyer members, the city spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on hiring legal counsel that specialized in labor negotiations. Now, the city wants to spend more taxpayer dollars on an arbitrator to resolve an issue created by their stonewalling, foot dragging and incompetence. How many qualified employees will resign before this madness ends?
This article was first published in the Berkeley Times on February 24, 2022.
