CITY OF
OAKLAND
PROFESSIONAL, TECHNICAL & ADMINISTRATIVE EMPLOYEES LOCAL 21, ifpte | afl-cio APRIL 7, 2015
Bargaining Update #2
Local 21 bargained with the City Administration on Wednesday, March 25 and April 1, 2015. We
continued to discuss establishing ground rules and the Union started submitting clean-up and
non-economic proposals. The Administration is taking a new approach by presenting their
“conceptual” proposals to the bargaining team as a way to start talking about issues before presenting actual language. So far, we’ve tentatively reached agreements on three proposals, two
clean-up proposals from Local 21, and ground rules. A first for us!
CITY OF OAKLAND CHAPTERS
436 14th Street, Ste. 1520
Oakland, CA 94612
www.ifpte21.org/OaklandBargaining2015
(510) 451-4982
Going forward, Local 21 will be meeting face to face with the Administration primarily on Friday’s
and will caucus with our team on Wednesdays (unless the City is available to meet with us on that
day). Progress is steady with the bargaining team working very hard to make things happen.
Members, meanwhile, are working on wage and equity proposals with our Local 21 Research
Specialist, Sean Aten. These proposals must be completed by April 17th and will be evaluated by
the bargaining team before they are presented to the City.
Local 21 has hired Karen Williams (shown
here with Subha Varadarajan) to work
with us for the Oakland contract campaign, primarily with the members of our
Contract Action Team (CAT). Karen comes
to us from a union of Home Care Workers
and has been known to do the “wobble”
on Frank Ogawa Plaza. We have the evidence of Karen on the line at our strike
on July 1, 2013. Look for her to visit you at
your work site soon!
Cesar Chavez Celebration
March 31st is Cesar Chavez’s birthday and in the state of California, it is an official holiday. Here in
Oakland, Local 21 again sponsored a Cesar Chavez Celebration to remember and honor his work.
Juanita Velasquez and her crew of amazing volunteers helped coordinate this very special event.
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Our honored guest speaker this year was Cesar Chavez Jr, the grandson of the iconic labor
organizer, who spoke at length about his grandfather’s legacy. Elected representatives including
Mayor Libby Schaaf, Council members Abel Guillen (D-2) and Rebecca Kaplan (At-Large), and City
Auditor Brenda Roberts attended. Council member Guillen presented Cesar Chavez, Jr with a City
of Oakland gold pin and Local 21 donated a $500 honorarium to the Cesar Chavez Foundation.
LOCAL 21 CITY OF OAKLAND BARGAINING UPDATE #2
PAGE 2
Close to 200 members attended the event with many bringing canned food for donation to the Alameda
County Food Bank.
Calendar
CAT TEAM MEETING:
Wednesday, April 8,12
Noon
Local 21 Oakland office
This annual celebration started
13 years ago when Local 21 and
other City unions first proposed making Cesar Chavez’s
birthday an official holiday for
City of Oakland employees.
Together with you, this will be
the year we make it happen!
CESAR CHAVEZ, JR. STANDS (LEFT)
BARGAINING DATES:
Friday, April 10
WITH LOCAL 21 EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEMBER TOM MANLEY,
STAFF MIKE SEVILLE AND LOCAL 21
MEMBER JUANITA VELASQUEZ.
OAKLAND SUPERVISORS
& MANAGERS:
Chapter meeting
Wednesday, April 8
11:30 – 12:30
Edgewater Corp. Yard
Ready Room
Health Care Cost Containment Summit
Representatives from elected officials, labor, and management from local governments throughout the
East Bay met on Thursday, April 2 at a ‘Health Care Costs: Trends, Consequences, Causes and Solutions’
Summit to gain a better understanding of the local causes of medical cost inflation and to develop strategies to reduce health care costs and stabilize medical premium trends.
Public employers and employees share an interest in controlling health care costs, without not reducing
wages and benefits or the ability to invest in the components of a healthy community: quality schools,
safe streets and communities, public transit and other important priorities. Working families, along with
state and local governments are struggling to cope with high health insurance premiums and medical
costs. Rising health care spending completely erased income gains for the typical family over the past
decade. Health care is the primary driver of state and local governments’ long-term fiscal challenges.
Did you know health care costs are less in Southern California than in Northern California? Why? Because
there are more health care providers in that part of California. In other words, more competition and less
monopoly! Panelists including Bill Lindsay, Richmond City Manager spoke about rising benefit costs and
its impact on public employees: Doug McGeever from CALPERS provided insight on what CALPERS is
doing to help contain costs; Mark Farrell, San Francisco Supervisor talked about unjustified rate increases
and the fight with Kaiser in San Francisco; Sally Covington, SEIU 1021 Sr. Health Care Advisor spoke about
the causes and consequences of rising costs; and Jaime King UCSF/ UC Hastings spoke about the need for
transparency and anti-trust action to reduce health costs.
An Action Packet urging support for Senate Bill 26 – the health care transparency bill – was distributed to
all attendees. Everyone was encouraged to take the information from the Summit back to their jurisdictions and to adopt a sample resolution to support transparency and accountability in health care, like
we’ve done in Oakland and San Francisco.
We are ready to change the conversation about health care and to shift the focus to where it really belongs.