4.75% Raises Over 15 Months : Ventura County Workers OK Pact

By a 3-1 margin, the union that represents most Ventura County government workers on Monday ratified a labor contract that calls for a 4.75% salary increase over the next 15 months.

The ratification, however, was reached without the vote of three groups that opposed the contract and have filed for disassociation from the union.

After the ratification, union leaders said they would attempt to quell internal dissent and vowed to seek a larger raise in 1988.

“We didn’t reach the point of parity, and that’s a big issue for us,” said Barry Hammitt, executive director of the Public Employees Assn. of Ventura County. PEAVC at first sought a 9.5% increase over two years that would have put government workers on a par with employees of other large Southern California counties, Hammitt said.

Ventura County’s Board of Supervisors is expected to formally approve the contract today.

The $6-million package in wages and benefits includes a 2.25% raise now and a 2.5% increase in May, 1988. It leaves control of employee health plans in PEAVC hands. It was ratified in a 3-1 vote, Hammitt said, and is retroactive to Sept. 6, the day that county negotiators and union leaders first hammered out the terms.

3 Groups Left Out

But the ratification was achieved without the vote of some of the contract’s most outspoken critics. Late last month, Hammitt excluded the probation officers’ bargaining unit from the ratification vote because of the group’s efforts to leave the union.

Hammitt also excluded the criminal attorneys’ unit and the patrol unit--made up of airport, harbor and park patrols--after those groups also filed for decertification.

The union has 14 bargaining units for its various work classifications, and each unit must approve the contract by a majority vote. Hammitt said his actions were prompted by the groups’ efforts to disassociate from PEAVC.

All told, the three groups account for about 300 of the 4,100 employees whom PEAVC represents. About 2,600 of those employees are dues-paying members, Hammitt said.

If the county’s personnel department finds that the paper work filed by the groups that want to secede is in order, the issue will go before the county’s Civil Service Commission for a final decision. The commission is made up of five people appointed by the Board of Supervisors.

Among the points won by PEAVC are a county study to determine retirement benefits for deputy probation officers, an increase in textbook and tuition allowances, and an increase in the amount of unused vacation time for which the county will pay employees.

The union conceded defeat on attempts to make all employees who are eligible for union membership pay a mandatory union fee regardless of whether they are in the union.