By Jessyka Heredia
Watch full video here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJOZ2axvBX0
July 21, 2023 (Lemon Grove)—
On Tuesday, members of the Lemon Grove public works department, their family members and union representatives filled the audience during public comment at the Lemon Grove City Council meeting. They asked for the city’s support in negotiations currently underway with the city and Local Union 127 that represents city workers.
Public Works employee Tania Iriate spoke about her experiences as a Tech II in the department over the last year and a half since she was hired by the city.
Iriate said, “I am a resident of the community and I have seen how everything works around here. When I started with the city, I didn’t know that they had such a small group of people working for the city.” Iriate said as a resident, she would always ask herself “Why are the parks [defaced] with graffiti?” Iriate says her children “go to school in the city and I always had questions as a resident, but as an employee I am asking you to be on our side.”
Iriate is asking for the city to “make sure we get the right benefits, the rights and the right compensation for working hard out here with such a small group of employees.”
Iriate said she sees “employees come in and then they quit.” She added that she is “personally aware of the reasons why they leave and one of them is definitely our wages and all the overtime that we have to put in.”
Mat Kostrinsky, the representative from Local Union 127 AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), was also in the audience to speak on behalf of the public works employees. Kostrinsky said, “My members, your employees, have a large turnover rate here at the city due to low wages, unmanageable workload, and high expectations of what they need to do and when they need to do it.”
Kostrinsky said that their “proposal will try to address those concerns” and that the “members want more certainty in city roles in MOU (Memorandum of Understanding).”
ECM reached out to Kostrinsky a few days later to get a clearer sense of how long these negotiations might take and what the public works employees were hoping would come out of the negotiations.
Kostrinsky replied, “My members want a deal quickly. We are rushing to get proposals written and presented. We signed off on a deadline to have all proposals presented to management within four meetings, which will be by August 22. This is the first time I have signed such an agreement, which is not required in bargaining.”
When asked how long it could take to get to the final MOU, Kostrinsky said, “Negotiation can last days, weeks, months, and sometimes a year or more. It depends on the two sides wanting to reach a deal and being able to honestly understand the other side and be reasonable with their proposals and counterproposals.”
Perhaps the most important part of these negotiations is what the employees hope to gain in the end. Kostrinsky explained, “Our members have many issues that require to be addressed, which is why there needs to be an entire MOU written. Some are issues unseen or felt by the public but directly impact the employees. Others we are addressing impact City services with staffing levels and retention. Management is relying on many temporary workers and positions are left unfilled for months or longer. Employees have a livability problem that $17.03 an hour is not sustainable, especially when they are scheduled for less than 40 hours a week. I expect the average Lemon Grove resident does not know how little the employees are paid and then how few there are of them.”
Kosztrinsky said the City Council voted to authorize a 3% pay raise on July 1st, per the City Manager, for only City employees who don’t have a union contract with a mechanism for pay raises. They excluded Public Works employees, who don’t have a mechanism to get a raise. The City could have given them the raise and then calculated that raise into our negotiations, but they didn’t do it. Other employers have given pay raises to union members when bargaining a new contract, to be fair. They will then “bake” the raise into the bargaining. Why didn’t the city? I can’t get a good answer.”
When ECM reached out to Lydia Romero, the City Manager for Lemon Grove, to see if she wanted to comment on the speakers that left public comment and why the Public works was left out of the 3% raise increase she replied, “The negotiation process will remain between the two parties that are negotiation, therefore the city does not have a comment.”