$13.6 Million in City Pay Hikes OKd : But Police, White-Collar Unions Fail to Approve Package

The San Diego City Council approved a $13.6-million wage and benefits package for 7,000 city employees for the 1985-86 fiscal year but remained at impasse late Tuesday with the city’s two largest unions, representing police officers and white-collar workers.

The package will go into effect July 1.

Police and white-collar workers will receive the raise, under provisions of the City Charter, even if their unions do not approve the package. “That’s it,” said City Atty. John Witt, “so long as the law has been followed in meeting and conferring, the legislation passes.”

Those working without a contract for the year will receive a salary increase but will not have any agreement covering such issues as grievance procedures, city officials said.

Late Tuesday, a spokesman for the Municipal Employees Assn., representing 2,000 white-collar workers, said the city’s final offer was not far from the raises his group had sought. He said the MEA’s negotiating committee would probably recommend ratification by Friday.

But the 1,370-member Police Officers Assn. was not expected to settle soon.

In three meetings today, San Diego police officers are to decide whether to accept the city’s offer of a 5.5% salary increase or whether to hold out for the two-step raise the POA wants--5% July 1 and another 5% Jan. 1.

Without the two-step raise, POA President Ty Reid said, San Diego officers will still earn significantly less than officers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento. (Reid addressed the council via videotape Tuesday because he was in Sacramento attending a memorial service for officers killed on the job.)

Mid-level San Diego police officers are paid $27,435 a year and would earn $28,943 under the new contract. Their salary now is 9% to 30% below those of officers in other California cities, POA attorney Chris Ashcraft said, and the council’s raise will not close the gap.

Ashcraft predicted that “there will be a lot of very angry police officers at our meeting” today to discuss the city’s new salary schedule. But “I’m not going to suggest we’re going to do anything” like “blue flu” or other job actions, he said. On Monday, the state Supreme Court ruled that municipal employees may strike, but not if a job action threatens health and safety. The ruling apparently means that police may not strike.

The council voted, 7-1, with Councilman Bill Cleator opposed and Councilman Bill Mitchell absent, to approve the salary ordinance. That includes a 5.5% salary increase for police officer, a 5% increase for firefighters, a 4.5% salary increase for white collar workers and most other city employees.

The package for police officers includes broader disability coverage. For the first time since 1981, new officers as well as veterans are to be covered by disability insurance. The benefits also include an increase in premium pay for motorcycle officers from $63 a month to $122 a month. But stress has been eliminated from officers’ disability benefits because of “abuse” in claims, said city labor relations expert Jack McGrory.

San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock, as he urged a vote for the salary package, called this last year “a very difficult one within the city with respect to police officers. I hope never to see another police officer shot and killed.”

The salary ordinance “isn’t what we’d like to do (for employees). We’d like to say yes, believe me. We appreciate employees. We appreciate the work they do,” Hedgecock said.