This is the Contra Costa County Labor
Coalition’s bargaining update for Thursday, February 12th.
The County reduced its pay cut
proposal today from 7% to 5.5%. The
County’s Chief Negotiator said that the County’s bargaining team wants to
discuss with us our alternatives to their proposed pay cut such as furloughs,
reduced workweeks, and temporarily higher payments for such things as health
care and/or pension.
In light of the current financial
climate, we withdrew our proposals for additional longevity pay after 15 years
and for an increase in bilingual pay. We
spent an extensive amount of time discussing our proposals concerning
layoffs. We want to make improvements in
the current contract language to provide our members with more protections.
We expect the County to have
additional responses to us next week on more non-economic issues. We are continuing our side table negotiations,
addressing issues of particular concern to individual unions. We are working hard to find ways to get
through this budget crisis. However, the
County has proposals on the table that will hurt hard-working County employees
and their families and will adversely affect services to the public.
We are meeting with members at
jobsites to report on what is happening at the bargaining table and to hear your
views on negotiations. If you want a
meeting at your site, please call your union.
It has never been more important that
we remain strong and stand together.
Please share this message with your
co-workers and encourage them to keep up to date on negotiations. Remind them they can call the hotline at
(925) 335-5595.
Our next bargaining session is
Thursday, February 19th.
