City’s Managers to Form Bargaining Unit

Pasadena City Hall managers, some of them the highest paid employees working for the city, have voted to form a collective bargaining unit to negotiate their salaries and benefits.

The Pasadena Management Assn., composed of planners, engineers, nurses and professionals with salaries ranging from $50,000 to $75,000 a year, voted 273 to 67 to form a collective bargaining unit for the 440 members. Ballots were tabulated last week.

Association President Mike Milliner, administrative officer for information systems and technology for the Water and Power Department, characterized the vote as “historic.” A handful of Southern California cities, including Santa Monica, Burbank, Culver City and Hermosa Beach, have collective bargaining for management employees.

Milliner was quick to point out that the vote was not a vote against City Manager Phil Hawkey or the current administration at City Hall.

“We want to just hold the line,” Milliner said. “Some people want to see this as a referendum on the current administration. The Pasadena Management Assn. does not aspire to that position.”

The drive to organize a collective bargaining unit for mid- and top-level managers started two years ago. At that time, city management decided to close a projected $10-million budget gap in part by eliminating raises, suspending merit pay and freezing car allowances for management employees. Over the past three years, managers have lost $5.2 million in salaries and benefits while workers represented by unions have seen wages and benefits go up more than $4 million during the same period, Milliner said.

Rod Olguin, a management association board member, said the vote indicated employees felt strongly about the cuts in their salaries and benefits.

“There could have been other ways we could have met revenue shortfalls without taking the salary cuts and freezes that we did,” said Olguin, a project planner with the Planning and Permitting Department,

Hawkey could not be reached for comment.