Marin County supervisors have approved tentative labor agreements with three more of the county’s 10 employee bargaining units.
The supervisors voted Tuesday in favor of agreements with the Marin County Probation Managers Association, the Marin County Sheriff’s Staff Officers’ Association and the Marin County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association.
The supervisors also reviewed a tentative new agreement with the deputy district attorneys’ unit, but delayed approving it until their meeting next week.
Meanwhile, negotiations with the firefighters’ association and probation workers represented by Teamsters Local 856 have encountered difficulties. Both unions are engaged with the county in a pre-impasse process known as “fact finding.”
As previously announced, the tentative agreement with the deputy district attorneys calls for a 3.5% pay increase in fiscal 2022-23, a 3% increase effective July 2023 and a 3% increase effective in July 2024. The tentative agreement with the deputy sheriffs provides for a 2% increase in fiscal 2022-23, a 3% increase effective July 2023 and a 3% increase effective in July 2024.
The agreement with the sheriff’s staff officers also calls for a 2% increase in fiscal 2022-23, a 3% increase effective July 2023 and a 3% increase effective in July 2024. The agreement with probation managers provides for a 3.5% pay increase in fiscal 2022-23, a 3% increase effective July 2023 and a 3% increase effective in July 2024.
All of the tentative agreements reviewed Tuesday are similar to the contract extension previously signed by the Marin Association of Public Employees (MAPE) and new agreements recently reached with other county units.
All four tentative agreements include equity pay raises for certain job classifications, some as high as 4%; a one-time $1,000 retention bonus for members; signing bonuses of $2,500 to $10,000 for hard-to-fill positions; and more money to help cover increases in health care costs. The deputy sheriffs’ contract also includes a one-time, lump sum payment of $2,400 for each member.
All of the agreements provide employees with two new paid holidays: Cesar Chavez Day, which honors the Latino labor organizer, and Juneteenth, which commemorates the day that formerly enslaved African Americans in Texas were told they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.
County employees now have 12 paid holidays, including Martin Luther King Jr. Day. However, half-day holidays on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve have been eliminated.
The Marin County Employees’ Retirement Association (MCERA) bases its planning on the assumption that employee yearly raises will not exceed 3%. The yearly cost of living raises provided in some of these agreements exceed 3%, and the equity raises added to the annual cost of living raises push the yearly increases higher.
Jeff Wickman, the administrator for the association, said all four agreements exceed its wage growth assumption. The variances range from the deputy sheriffs’ agreement, which exceeds the assumption by 1.6%, to the probation managers’ agreement, which exceeds the assumption by 5%.
Wickman estimates that the four agreements combined will increase the association’s actuarial liability by $2.87 million. Wickman said new agreements recently signed with MAPE, the Marin County Management Employees’ Association and employees not represented by a union would add another $4.97 million in unfunded liability, boosting the total to $7.84 million.
The fact-finding phase of negotiations that Marin County Firefighters’ Association and probation workers represented by Teamsters Local 856 have embarked on is often a last-ditch effort to avoid a strike.
Under Assembly Bill 646, adopted in 2012, if a local public employer and its employee organization are unable to reach agreement in negotiations, the employee organization may request that the parties’ differences be submitted to a fact-finding panel.
Fact-finding panels are made up of a union member, a management member and a neutral chair appointed by the Public Employment Relations Board. Fact‐finding panels make recommendations, but those recommendations are non-binding.
Fact-finding hearings for the probation workers are scheduled for Oct. 3 and Oct. 5. Fact-finding hearings for the firefighters are scheduled for Oct. 10 and Oct. 12.
Susanna Farber, an attorney representing Teamsters Union Local 856, which represents the probation workers, said the fact-finding process typically results in a single hearing. Recommendations are made within 30 to 60 days.
Farber said the county has agreed to one of the union’s primary demands, that it restore a bilingual job classification that it eliminated in the 2000s.
Farber said now, however, there is a new bone of contention. The county has proposed striking language in the contract that prohibits it from outsourcing work performed by deputy probation officers and juvenile correction officers.