Public Employee Press

Locals submitting salary review proposals

Union locals are preparing proposals to improve pay and other compensation for specific job titles and occupational groups within the framework of the union’s new economic agreement with the city.

The pact provides for a Salary Review Panel to consider proposals to upgrade workers deemed to deserve better compensation.

Proposals are supposed to be submitted to the panel within 160 days after the ratification of the new collective bargaining agreement, which members approved by 97 percent in a mail-ballot vote announced Aug. 25.

The DC 37 Research and Negotiations Dept. is compiling applications from locals to prepare a report for the panel. Among the locals exploring proposals are 372, 375, 983, 1407, 1549 and library locals 1321, 1482 and 1930.

The department plans to hold a meeting soon with local union presidents to discuss the salary review process.

The union also expects to draw upon research from its White Paper project headed by Associate Director Oliver Gray and Assistant to the Associate Director Henry Garrido, DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts said.

Funding through savings
The project studies ways the city could save money by eliminating wasteful contracting out of city jobs. In recent years, the White Paper findings have led the city to quietly halt some contracting and to replace consultants with union computer workers.

The Salary Review Panel will include representatives of the union and the city and a third member to be agreed upon by both sides.

Because the contract does not provide for funding, the union will be responsible for identifying possible savings to justify any upgrades it agrees on.

The economic agreement calls for the panel to consider proposals for titles and occupational groups that meet any of four criteria:

• workers in revenue-producing titles,
• employees in titles or occupational groups that were previously contracted out but are now filled by union members,
• workers whose duties have evolved to require significant improvement in skills and responsibilities, and
• workers paid significantly below their counterparts in the private sector or with state, county or municipal jobs.

“The Salary Review Panel is a creative and novel provision of the contract, which we are approaching very seriously,” Roberts said.

“Whether it’s by pointing to inefficient management practices, below-market pay scales, under-compensation of highly skilled workers and others who have assumed more complex duties and responsibilities, we hope to be able to successfully push for upgrades for deserving workers,” Roberts said.

Over the years, the union has tried to use the bargaining process to address under-compensation particularly though not exclusively of professional workers. Contracts have included equity panels to identify titles for raises and have set up additional compensation funds to allow bargaining units to add straight salary hikes, differentials, salary increments and even annuities.