Talks Between County, Union in Limbo

Talks between San Diego County officials and four labor unions representing county employees were in limbo Tuesday, and no new sessions were scheduled.

County officials said Tuesday that they were mystified when union negotiators walked out of a mediation session earlier this week.

Eliseo Medina, executive director of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the county’s largest labor union, said the county had “declared a unilateral impasse” in contract discussions. County officials countered by saying such a statement is “irrelevant.”

“You can’t have a unilateral declaration of impasse. I don’t even understand what that means,” said Ethel (Dee) Chastain, the county’s director of human resources. “They walked out of a mediation session--they did. We didn’t.”

The walkout occurred Monday, in the midst of the second session with an outside mediator. County spokesman Robert A. Lerner said, “We’re anxious to get this moving. We feel a need to protect our employees from potential layoffs. The sooner we can implement a variety of things--such as our integrated-leave program--the sooner we can start to implement cost reductions.

“For example, if negotiations drag on until next spring, and we find the budget still out of whack, we’ll have to implement some very serious cost-saving programs.”

Lerner said one of those would have to be “significant layoffs. That’s the last thing we would want to do. We are alone among large San Diego employers in not laying off employees. That’s why we agreed to the mediation session.”

Medina, the chief negotiator for the SEIU Service Council, sent press releases to media organizations Tuesday, but otherwise could not be reached for comment.

He said in his press release that the county has “not been negotiating in good faith” and added, “We will take whatever action is necessary to protect our members. We are willing to negotiate an agreement, but it has to be fair to both sides, not just to the county.”

County official Chastain said an anticipated $14 million in budget cuts would affect employees, “with the most highly paid having to sacrifice more.”

The county is proposing two to five unpaid days a year for lower-paid workers, with higher-paid workers, at the high end of a graduated scale, having to take a maximum of 12 days a year without pay.