City Workers Sue Newport Beach Over Wage Dispute

The city’s blue-collar workers on Monday filed suit against their employer, claiming that the city reneged on its offer of an 8% salary increase starting Jan. 1.

Filed in Orange County Superior Court on behalf of the 200-plus-member Newport Beach Employees’ League, the suit charges that the city is balking at its own salary policy by refusing to provide the pay raise.

City officials, however, said they are following their policy by not providing the pay raise in a year of budget-cutting.

“It looks like they’re trying to cause the city to make the pay increase because we always have,” said Personnel Director Duane Munson.

Members of the league, one of Newport Beach’s six employee associations, have been working without a contract since July 1. Negotiators met about two weeks ago, and neither side has yet declared an impasse.

The lawsuit focuses on the city’s J-1 policy, established in 1961 as a salary guideline for employee negotiations.

“In general, Newport Beach guidelines should be established and maintained at levels substantially equivalent to the average paid comparable positions in cities and private employment in Orange County,” the original policy reads. In 1980, the City Council amended the policy to say that barring budgetary considerations, “salaries and benefits for non-key management employees shall be established at levels comparable to the top three cities in Orange County.”

According to the lawsuit, city officials said during bargaining sessions in September that they would not fund the J-1 pay raise because of projected budgetary problems. The league then offered to arbitrate the wage dispute, but the city refused, court documents say.

“We have budgetary constraints, and I think that’s easy for us to demonstrate,” Munson said.