Union Cites Poll in Fight With County

The union representing 47,000 county workers released survey results Wednesday showing that the majority of “active” county voters support their demand for a 15.5% salary increase over three years.

Local 660 of the Service Employees International Union is poised to begin a series of “rolling” strikes in individual county departments Monday and a full strike Oct. 11 if it doesn’t reach a contract agreement with the county by then.

“This poll shows overwhelming public support for county workers in our current dispute,” Local 660 general manager Annelle Grajeda told reporters on the steps of the County Hall of Administration.

“We want to reach a settlement,” she said, “but we are also very clear about what we need to get that.”

The poll found that 54% of county voters agree that a 5% annual pay raise for county workers over three years would be fair. That figure jumped to 60% when the question noted that county supervisors will get a $15,000 raise this year.

The telephone poll surveyed 400 county residents who had voted in any of three major elections since 1996. Conducted by David Binder Research of San Francisco between Sept. 23 and Sept. 25, the poll has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

The county has offered a 9% pay increase over three years, but the union says that would deny its members, who went without raises for several years during the 1990s, their share of current economic good times.

Many other county unions, including those representing firefighters and sheriff’s deputies, have accepted the county’s 9%, three-year raise. But Local 660, whose members range from ambulance drivers to part-time library workers, has said for more than a year that it would strike unless it got more.

Supervisor Don Knabe said that the union’s demands would cost the county about $200 million a year and that taxpayers would be asked to pick up half of that.

Saying he hoped that some resolution and a sense of fairness could be reached in negotiations, he called the poll “somewhat biased.”

“It asked some leading questions leading to misleading answers,” he said.

Knabe did credit Grajeda and “her troops” with being willing to continue negotiating, adding: “Hopefully, we won’t have to go through rolling strikes.”

But those are exactly what the county will face if no settlement is reached by Friday, Grajeda said, with the first walkouts coming in the registrar-recorder’s office and the Department of Animal Control.

Union officials said the 15.5% raise would only bring members’ wages back to their 1990 level, when adjusted for inflation. As bankruptcy loomed over the county in the ‘90s, union members went four--sometimes five--years without raises, they said.