Rebuttal to Chris Jeffers’ Email to All Employees about GMEA Negotiations
August 23, 2010
Dear Glendora Employees:
My name is Wendell Phillips. I am a California attorney and the Chief Negotiator for the Glendora Municipal Employees’ Association (GMEA), which is the largest labor organization for City of Glendora employees.
When Mr. Jeffers first learned the City would not be able to impose “terms and conditions” on GMEA members last year due to a “ground rule” that required mutual agreement to go to impasse, he lost his temper and, in his own words, “removed” himself from the proceedings. I saw much of that same petulance in the tone of his recent “all hands” email to City employees. I must ask for your indulgence for cluttering up your virtual mailbox, but many of Mr. Jeffers’ statements attacking the GMEA in that email are so at odds with the facts that simple fairness demands that they be rebutted in the same medium in which his misstatements were originally published.
This story really begins last year when the members of the Police Officers’ Association (GPOA) and the Police Managers’ Association (GPMA) graciously offered to forego their negotiated raises so that GMEA members would not have to take a “hit” to reach agreement with the City. Thanks again to the men and women of those organizations for their generosity. Their selflessness more than covered the arbitrary dollar figure the City Manager had decreed had to be contributed by City employees. The number wasn’t driven by economic necessity, it was just a figure plucked out of the air that would put the City in a position to demand a 3% salary concession from all employees.
To prove that actual dollar figure was meaningless, the CM accepted the concession from the GPOA and GPMA, but refused to credit the contribution to the general employees to the point of trying to deny that helping relieve the burden on GMEA members was the reason the two safety associations delayed their increases in the first place. The CM continued to demand an additional 3% concession from GMEA, and but for the aforementioned negotiations’ “ground rule” requiring mutual agreement to go to impasse, would have unilaterally declared impasse and asked the City Council to impose the 3% salary cut on GMEA members then and there.
Fast forward to this year’s negotiations. With a new Deputy City Manager short on California labor relations experience but obviously worth the significant raise she received to replace the retiring Mr. Heaton, and a management law firm that, among other things, teaches public employers how to take salary and benefits away from public employees (while billing at a rate somewhere north of $250 an hour), the City came to the bargaining table saying they weren’t much interested in ground rules this year, but they were willing to “let bygones be bygones”. The very next words out of their negotiator’s mouth dealt with furlough days to be enforced solely with regard to GMEA members to make up for the 3% the City was unable to take last year (I guess they have a different definition for “bygones”), and a demand that GMEA members pay the entire portion of the employees’ portion of the PERS contribution. The economic concessions demanded of GMEA members totaled about 8%.
Between that opening meeting and the day the City declared impasse, no serious consideration was given to any GMEA proposal. We did not come in asking for any increases this year, and were prepared to make some sacrifices, but the only changes of substance we were able to convince the City to make involved reducing the demanded furlough days from eight to six, and eliminating furloughs from positions that require minimum staffing so that the City would not have to pay 18.5 hours (12.33 x 1.5 OT rate) for backfilling to try and impose furloughs on those employees.
In the middle of scheduled bargaining discussions, the City announced a “study” was being conducted regarding customer service in the City’s Engineering/Planning Department. Public Records Act requests produced email communications from upper management that established that the “study” was actually being conducted to justify the layoff of city employees which had apparently already been designated, including some GMEA members. That decision was withheld from the targets of those layoffs while other vacant City positions were being filled.
Those vacant positions could have been filled by the layoff targets if GMEA or the affected employees had been advised layoffs were imminent. Instead, FTE’s (full time employees) were let go while newly hired probationary employees are still working. The City’s hired negotiator advised us that under the City’s Personnel Rules, the layed off GMEA members could be accommodated, but the City was choosing not to do so. The exact words from the City negotiator were, “Under the (Personnel) Rules we could accommodate you (the layoff targets), but we’re not going to do it”.
After the layoffs, which we were told would have occurred whether or not GMEA conceded to the City’s demands for concessions, the City presented a “take it or leave it” Last Best Offer that was actually more economically devastating than their initial offer in that GMEA had to agree to make the proposed furloughs a permanent part of their MOU (Memorandum of Understanding/Collective Bargaining Agreement.)
The GMEA membership understandably unanimously rejected the City’s Last Best Offer,
And although we stated in writing that we did not believe we were at impasse, the City unilaterally declared impasse. In a perfect example of what has come to be known as “Jeffersspeak” the City claimed to the media that they were trying hard to resolve the impasse that they themselves had declared over our objections.
While GMEA was trying to find a way to reach agreement, the CM tried to sneak a significant salary raise for City Department Heads through City Council on the consent calendar! Consent items appear with very brief descriptions on the Council agenda and usually get approved without debate or explanation. This plan involved a new 10 step pay table for upper management where the lowest step was equal to or higher than the current highest step for those employees. There was no restriction on which step an upper manager could be placed at, and the new figures offered a top salary approximately 22.5% higher than the current top salaries for those positions! Last but not least, this “consent” item also stated these raises would be in addition to any future cost-of-living (COLA) raises given to lower represented managers.
The plan was referred to as being “merit” based. The definition of merit in the Jeffers’ administration is how eager you are perceived to be in support of going along with the CM’s “program”. (In contrast, GMEA’s response to impasse proposal to the City for one more pay step to be added on to our respective pay table for those with acceptable job performance in return for giving up the demanded PERS concession and agreeing to furloughs was rejected out of hand by the CM.)
To justify this whopping increase, top managers were represented as volunteering to “give up” their employer paid employee’s PERS contribution (3.8% of annual salary) and an annual 40 hour leave balance buyout (1.9% of annual salary). In other words, these managers were “giving up” 5.7% of salary to get a potential for a 22.5% raise, and the CM (who isn’t getting a direct raise out of this scheme yet), and the Finance Director submitted a signed statement verifying that the new plan had no fiscal impact on the City budget! For a moment, I thought I was in Bell or Maywood.
GMEA representatives, including me were present. I asked that the item be removed from the consent calendar to permit public debate. The Council granted half my request. They took it off the Consent Calendar, but took no public comment before adopting the proposal 5-0. If you watch the video, I urge you to count the number of times the Council Members parrot Mr. Jeffers’ claim that the measure was prompted by the need to be “transparent”.
Transparent? Really? How transparent is it when you try and run a 22.5% raise for upper management through on a Consent Calendar with no prior public announcement, and with supporting figures charts that changed twice during the meeting, and still weren’t accurate several days later?
How transparent is it when you try to impose the PERS concession and furlough days on line employees while at the same time you try and slide through potential 22.5% raises (not including COLA’s) for upper management?
How long will it be before the CM is given a raise by this same City Council because his subordinates are “too close” to his salary? A salary which, despite his claims of “paying his own PERS”, still provides for a raise every year. (It should be noted that there was never any public discussion of upper managers paying their own PERS this year until GMEA filed Public Records Act requests for copies of individual upper management contracts which proved that the City was contracted to pay those amounts on behalf of those managers. Individuals who file such requests were reportedly referred to as “assholes” by at least one upper manager.)
How transparent is it when a City Council member, who voted for this scheme states on the video that he “doubts” the written guarantee of revenue neutrality made by the CM and the Finance Manager, and then votes to approve the raises any way?
How transparent is it when the CM bemoans the abuses in other cities like Bell and Maywood in an email to all employees right after getting caught pulling exactly the same kind of shenanigans in Glendora? This is simply a case of the highest paid employees getting a fat raise that the working people at the lower salary levels who still have their jobs have to pay for.
This Tuesday, August 24, 2010, at 7:00 PM, this same City Council will meet to “consider” implementing terms and conditions on the GMEA, including the PERS concession and 6 permanent furlough days. If the meetings where they “considered” line employee layoffs and up to 22.5% management raises are examples of business as usual for Glendora, I have no doubt the Council Members are already crafting their speeches agreeing to whatever the CM asks to be implemented.
It has been noted by authors far more polished than I that when it comes to politics, “Ultimately, we get the government we deserve.” I hope, for both the citizens of Glendora, and the employees (many of whom are citizens) that this particular colloquialism is not true. I have met a goodly number of employees and citizens and none deserve the treatment I have observed being handed down by the current City administration. Regardless of what the CM now claims he wants, there can be no “team” atmosphere in a City where there is such a different standard governing the treatment of those employees at the top vs. those on the line.
I have been involved in public sector labor relations in various capacities for over 40 years. Personally, I have never seen a situation where a municipality imposed “terms and conditions” that in retrospect turned out to be the best solution. Mediation and Fact-Finding are both permitted under the Personnel Rules. The GMEA is amenable to either or both processes in our efforts to reach a negotiated successor MOU with the City of Glendora.
While I don’t expect that will happen, until Tuesday’s anticipated 5-0 vote for whatever Mr. Jeffers asks for is on record, those processes offer the best alternative to what has been, up to now, a march to imposed terms and conditions by the City and its representatives. If a “team” is truly what Mr. Jeffers wants, getting an agreement is far more likely to produce that result than is shoving imposed terms and conditions down line employees’ throats just because, at the moment, he apparently controls the votes on the City Council to do so.
I urge all City employees and their employee organization leaders, especially safety associations set to negotiate next year, to join me at the City Council meeting this Tuesday night, August 24, 2010, at 7:00 PM at City Hall. Until the Council either chooses to take back control of City Government, or finds a City Manager that can accurately tell the entire story, what has happened to GMEA, including the email attacks, is probably exactly what you can expect to be aimed at you in the future.
.Regards,
Wendell Phillips
Attorney for the GMEA