Union workers rally for fair contract
City has stalled negotiations, union members say
–Local 620 SEIU, a Central Coast union that represents city workers in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo County, held a rally yesterday evening in front of the library/city hall building.
Close to 100 local union members showed up to protest, holding signs and wearing graphic shirts that called for a fair contract with the city. Members say they have been bargaining since October 2014 and after almost 18 months there is still no agreement between the city and the union. The current Memorandum of Understanding expired on Dec. 31, 2014.
The Pomerico family: Cindy, Matt, Logan, Stephanie and Angela.
They say the city has offered a total of a 2-percent salary increase over two years with no retroactivity back to the expiration of the contract, meaning that over two years, union members would effectively see less than a 1-percent increase in salary over the two years of the contract.
Most jurisdictions in the area are seeing annual two to four percent increases in salary with some jurisdictions also obtaining benefit increases to cover the rising costs of health insurance, according to Field Representative/Internal Organizer Darryl Scheck.
“We just want a fair contract,” said Building and Maintenance worker Jesus Romero. Romero has been working with the city for 10 years.
“17 months without a union contract: that’s stubbornness, at least negotiate,” said Cindy Pomerico, whose husband has worked with the state for 27 years.
We got NO social security raise because gas prices are "down". I guess the high increase in other daily needs are irrelevant. "Fair" to the union is, we (the union) get more money and we get better benefits and you (the business)figure out how to pay for it by increasing costs to the taxpayer.
That's right!
2 percent is far more than the rest of the country got this year. "This is the job. This is what it pays. If you will not work for that amount, get an education and apply somewhere else."
In the story it says that they were offered less than 1% over 2 years. That isn't much. My guess is they also have educations, licenses etc. so they would be "skilled labor". Bosses would pay nothing if they could get away with it. As far as Social Security goes, I'll bet most unions would be in favor of raises in Social Security. No raises in Social Security seems like more of a problem with our dysfunctional federal government.
Organized-crime extortion by the endless greed of government unions is why the economy is in freefall and why government is going broke. If the useless and lazy parasites on our overbloated government payrolls aren't happy with their overgenerous pay and benefits, they can always seek jobs elsewhere. If you want to get rich, don't be a government employee.
FYI, the SEIU is comprised of unskilled labor. SEIU is a synomym for unproductive, uneducated and uncouth freeloaders.
Communists and SEIU Members march together at May Day Demonstration, L.A., Ca. Google it.
James Baker so Mr. Baker nothing like listening to another "Engineer" with tunnel vision. First I have to laugh at your comment above "if you want to get rich, don't be a government employee" exactly why these educated hard working folks were out there. They are not trying to get rich just trying to stay even with inflation. This group gave up several raises during the economic down turn as well as reduced work force to help minimize the impact on the budget. All while retirement and health care continue to rise for all of us Union or not..Of course maybe that's why you think we are all lazy, uneducated worthless employees because they are out there trying to do the work that should have twice as many staff. I take exception to your comment "uneducated", maybe because your retired your slightly out of touch with today's more technically skilled work force. There are many of what you call uneducated staff that have college degrees, college education, specific technical education and training and I am not talking about management staff I'm talking about line staff. I know on the utilities side which takes care of all your daily human necessities the advancement into a more highly technical field over the last ten to fifteen years has been exceptional. I would invite you Mr. Baker to come and tour the new water and wastewater plants that have recently gone on line and see how your uneducated, worthless employees are doing at running these new state of the art treatment facilities, you might be pleasantly surprised! So please Mr. Baker don't make uneducated opinions without educating yourself first.
Thank you Chris. Well said, and so true.
We got NO social security raise because gas prices are "down". I guess the high increase in other daily needs are irrelevant. "Fair" to the union is, we (the union) get more money and we get better benefits and you (the business)figure out how to pay for it by increasing costs to the taxpayer.
That's right!
2 percent is far more than the rest of the country got this year. "This is the job. This is what it pays. If you will not work for that amount, get an education and apply somewhere else."
In the story it says that they were offered less than 1% over 2 years. That isn't much. My guess is they also have educations, licenses etc. so they would be "skilled labor". Bosses would pay nothing if they could get away with it. As far as Social Security goes, I'll bet most unions would be in favor of raises in Social Security. No raises in Social Security seems like more of a problem with our dysfunctional federal government.
Organized-crime extortion by the endless greed of government unions is why the economy is in freefall and why government is going broke. If the useless and lazy parasites on our overbloated government payrolls aren't happy with their overgenerous pay and benefits, they can always seek jobs elsewhere. If you want to get rich, don't be a government employee.
FYI, the SEIU is comprised of unskilled labor. SEIU is a synomym for unproductive, uneducated and uncouth freeloaders.
Communists and SEIU Members march together at May Day Demonstration, L.A., Ca. Google it.
James Baker so Mr. Baker nothing like listening to another "Engineer" with tunnel vision. First I have to laugh at your comment above "if you want to get rich, don't be a government employee" exactly why these educated hard working folks were out there. They are not trying to get rich just trying to stay even with inflation. This group gave up several raises during the economic down turn as well as reduced work force to help minimize the impact on the budget. All while retirement and health care continue to rise for all of us Union or not..Of course maybe that's why you think we are all lazy, uneducated worthless employees because they are out there trying to do the work that should have twice as many staff. I take exception to your comment "uneducated", maybe because your retired your slightly out of touch with today's more technically skilled work force. There are many of what you call uneducated staff that have college degrees, college education, specific technical education and training and I am not talking about management staff I'm talking about line staff. I know on the utilities side which takes care of all your daily human necessities the advancement into a more highly technical field over the last ten to fifteen years has been exceptional. I would invite you Mr. Baker to come and tour the new water and wastewater plants that have recently gone on line and see how your uneducated, worthless employees are doing at running these new state of the art treatment facilities, you might be pleasantly surprised! So please Mr. Baker don't make uneducated opinions without educating yourself first.
Thank you Chris. Well said, and so true.