County Employees Offered Holiday, Pay Raise

About 7,800 Orange County employees would be entitled to take Martin Luther King’s birthday as a holiday and would receive a 4.75% wage increase during each of the next two years under a tentative contract agreement reached earlier this week.

Of the 7,800 workers, a group of 1,800 clerical employees would receive an additional 2.75% salary increase during the first year of the two-year contract because their pay has lagged behind that of comparable workers elsewhere, according to John Sibley, the county’s chief of employee relations.

The agreement was reached between negotiators for the Orange County Employees Assn. and the Board of Supervisors, Sibley said Friday. The average hourly pay of county employees represented by OCEA would increase 51 cents, from $10.82 currently to $11.33 during the first year of the contract, Sibley said. Both years of the contract combined would cost the county $19.5 million, he added.

Three Days of Balloting

OCEA General Manager John Sawyer was unavailable Friday. Other OCEA officials declined to discuss the contract. The organization’s 7,800 members are scheduled to ratify or reject the settlement during three days of balloting beginning Monday.

Sibley said the contract settlement was reached shortly after midnight Wednesday after 40 hours of non-stop bargaining. OCEA representatives originally sought a 14% wage increase and the county did not have an opening offer, he said.

Contract negotiations are still pending with bargaining units representing another 1,300 employees, including 500 county firefighters.

The holiday celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday would coincide with the federal holiday observances on Jan. 15, Sawyer said. After a lengthy court battle last year, county employees were told they could have the day off if they worked on one of the county’s other scheduled holidays, such as the day after Thanksgiving.