Unity Bid Fails as 5 County Employee Unions Seek Raises

Leaders of five unions representing 3,000 county workers met Friday to discuss joining forces in a combined job action against the Orange County Board of Supervisors, but they failed to reach a consensus.

The meeting came after county officials insisted that there is no money in their tight budget for employee raises. Union leaders have been considering several protest moves, including the county’s first strike by any of its employees.

Although no agreement was reached among the union leaders Friday, they agreed to hold future discussions.

Shared Their Gripes

The leaders shared their gripes and discussed how they might work together, said Robert MacLeod, general manager of the Assn. of Orange County Sheriff’s Deputies.

MacLeod said the next meeting date had not been scheduled.

“The county has been the best union organizer we’ve ever had,” said Fred Lowe, director of the Orange County Public Employee Council of the Service International Employees Union. “Now that we’ve come together, there’s going to be a whole different kind of dynamics going on.”

Three union memberships voted this week to authorize a strike, including the deputy sheriffs, who voted, 598 to 13, in balloting that ended Friday.

The Legality Question

Strikes by public safety workers are illegal, but MacLeod said a general walkout would be legal if all of the members submitted their resignations together.

After the sheriff’s deputies next meet with county officials on Aug. 17, MacLeod said the union leadership will decide whether to order a job action, which could be a work slowdown, a sickout or picketing.

The deputies are seeking a 12% wage increase and increased medical and retirement benefits. Also, they have asked for special-assignment pay for deputies assigned to hazardous duty in the department’s two helicopters.

Besides the deputies and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the other labor groups joining forces include the International Assn. of Firefighters, the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Combined, the unions represent nearly 3,000 county employees, including operators of heavy machinery, welfare processors, custodians, air-conditioning technicians, landfill workers, clerical workers and electricians.

Talks have formally reached an impasse for three of the unions: the deputy sheriffs, SEIU and IUOE.

About 12,000 of the county’s 14,000 employees have been working without contracts since the contracts expired July 3, said John Sibley, county director of employee relations.

Sibley said there has never been a strike of Orange County employees.

The only county employees working now under contract are the lawyers in the district attorney’s and public defender’s offices. But their contract expires in October.

This last week the Board of Supervisors held hearings on their budget for the current fiscal year, which began July 1. For months county officials have been searching to find ways to avoid more than 300 employee layoffs that would be required under the tentative $1.7- billion budget the supervisors approved in June.

Recently, the county received more money from the state than it anticipated. And county officials transferred more than $15 million from a landfill management account to pay some of the immediate costs of building new court-ordered jail facilities.

County administrators were calculating Friday how many more layoffs will still be needed.

Union officials say the county’s recent revenues should be enough to pay for salary increases, but county administrative officials disagree.

“The only thing we can say is that we are planning to continue all terms and conditions of the contracts that they had before,” Sibley said. “We think we’re paying a very competitive wage and benefit package to our employees.”

Sibley said that annual pay raises in Orange County since 1982 have averaged 6.7%, while the consumer price index has risen an average of 2.7% per year over the same period. “So we’ve outdistanced the cost of living,” he said.

But MacLeod countered that the sheriff deputies’ last contract was 2% to 4% below other Orange County police contracts. And this year other agencies are receiving 6% to 12% pay hikes, he said.

“It’s ludicrous,” MacLeod said. “It’s very difficult for any organization to tell its members they’re going to have no salary increase.”

The Orange County Employees Assn. (OCEA), which represents about 70% of the county’s employees, has not yet discussed a formal job action, said John H. Sawyer, the union’s general manager.

Reluctant on Stoppage

Sawyer said the membership is reluctant to order a work stoppage, although its members have complained that county administrators have unnecessarily spent millions of dollars on equipment like new computers.

“They’re putting machines ahead of people,” Sawyer said. “In a $1.7-billion budget, they can find a decent salary increase for the people who are doing all the work.”

The OCEA membership includes county clerical workers and the Superior Court staff.

As with the other bargaining units, the county’s refusal to grant a wage increase is the key issue in OCEA’s talks. Sawyer, however, declined to provide details.

Ann Imparata of AFSCME, which represents 530 welfare processors, said her union offered to accept a pay increase equal to the average increase to be approved by the county for all other bargaining units.

If nobody gets a raise, then AFSCME won’t either, she said, noting that the county refused the union’s offer.