Chief Negotiator Tom Diaz (back row, second from the right) with other union members and officials after the vote
Members of the largest city workers' union are set to get $220,000 worth of pay raises following the City Council's unanimous approval of a budget plan tonight.
Raises in apply to all of the union members, with greater increases going to those on the lower end of the pay scale. A last-minute substitution meant that union members got less than they had originally hoped for, but they were enthusiastic nonetheless.
Representatives from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees local initially asked for $409,000 for its "pay equity plan" to be included in the city budget for the upcoming fiscal year, but disagreements over how to allocate that money plagued negotiators. City Manager Erik Litzenberg tells SFR that the final plan presented to the council was completed only hours before Wednesday's meeting, too late for the new proposal to be included in the publicly available information packet.
Instead, City Attorney Erin McSherry gave councilors a short memo explaining the new proposal.
AFSCME negotiator Tom Diaz tells SFR that the plan that was presented was conceived of last Friday, but the union "needed to get some things ironed out," and decide if the plan was likely to pass. He says he knew he had the votes to pass the proposal when the meeting began.
Diaz describes the plan as a compromise, but one that nevertheless would help many of the city's most vulnerable employees. Those raises will begin at the beginning of the next fiscal year on July 1.
"It's a win for people who make less than $13 an hour," Diaz says. "A lot of those people are going to start seeing on July 1, $20, $30, $40, $50 more in each paycheck. That could be a quality-of-life change."
Even considering the reduced amount and the last-minute scramble, union members who attended the meeting reacted to the proposal's passage with excitement, applauding after the vote and sharing pizza once they'd filed out of City Hall.
"At least you're gonna get a living wage, a little bit more," says Chris Armijo, union organizer for AFSCME Council 18 . "Eleven bucks an hour? You can't survive on that."
The city Finance Committee has been conducting hearings on the fiscal year 2020 budget this week, with plans to wrap up Thursday. The current proposal has $933,000 for new AFSCME pay plans, and the $222,000 approved Wednesday night will come out of that amount. The union represents 760 city workers.
What to do with the remaining amount will be an ongoing discussion between the city and the union, according to Diaz and Mayor Alan Webber.
"We have to pass a budget first," Webber says.
