No-nonsense mediator prepared to settle year-long dispute
– without TV
Gilroy – An arbitrator who will settle a year-long labor dispute between City Hall and Fire Local #2805 showed flashes of humor and impatience for circuitous answers Wednesday, the first of six full-day hearings over the next week.
“We don’t have any networks clamoring to televise this,” arbitrator John Kagel said of the hearings over which he presides. The comment came as union and city negotiators argued the merits of airing the sessions on public access television.
Union representatives, fearful that Mayor Al Pinheiro will revive a campaign to uproot binding arbitration through a ballot measure, had demanded televised hearings to help educate voters about the process. But city officials declined to broadcast the hearings on Channel 17, which regularly carries city council and planning commission meetings, complained that such a move would impose additional costs on the city and create a “circus atmosphere.”
City negotiators agreed, however, to let the arbitration panel decide the matter during the first hearing on Wednesday. While the panel includes Ken Heredia and Charles Sakai, appointed respectively by the fire union and city, the hearings are led by Kagel, a Palo Alto attorney, labor mediator and arbitrator with more than three decades of experience.
Kagel showed little patience early on for round-about answers. He cut short union attorney Chris Platten who, asked to state the union’s position on the televised hearings, launched into a request for the city to justify its position.
“Do you want it televised?” Kagel asked. “Yes or no.”
After reconvening following lunch, Kagel quickly dispensed with the matter by casting a deciding vote in favor of the city, noting the objection of union appointee Heredia.
“Briefly stated – the purpose of an open meeting is to avoid the notion that the government works in secret,” he said. “This is not the government per se, but more of a judicial type of proceeding. Consequently, we look to the rules of court to determine whether to televise proceedings.”
Suzanne St. John-Crane, director of CMAP, the local public access television station, said the fire union still had options to broadcast the hearings.
“If a resident turns in a tape of the meeting as a public access show, we would have to air it on channel 20,” she pointed out.
Union officials, who spent the latter half of the day meeting in closed session with city negotiators, could not be reached for comment.
Kagel and the arbitration panel will have lighter work than originally expected over the next week, thanks to an early morning bargaining session between the two sides. The union agreed to withdraw five contract items from a list of 19, including requests for paid leave for union business and shorter probationary periods for new firefighters. The city withdrew a request related to arbitration on disciplinary matters. The city and union resolved four other items last month.
“The list has been remarkably reduced – at least in terms of numbers,” Kagel said, hinting that the most contentious issues remain.
In coming months, the panel will comb through testimony and evidence on a number of outstanding contract items. The 36-member fire union’s list of requests includes: an 11-percent pay raise over three years; a retirement package that would allow firefighters to retire at age 50 with 90 percent of their salary; and an increase in the percentage the city pays for health-care benefits. The city has countered with a 4.5-percent pay increase, a less-expensive version of the retirement package, and has requested a cap on medical benefit contributions
Kagel encouraged both sides to confer outside the hearings to find common ground.
“The best agreements are parties’ agreements,” he said an interview before the afternoon session. “If I can help I will.”
Kagel, who earned a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley, began working as an arbitrator and labor mediator in 1968. He noted that he helped pay his way through college as a sports writer and editor for the San Francisco Examiner.
Kagel refused to discuss matters related to the substance of the hearings, but was willing to respond when asked about his apparently no-nonsense approach to the arbitration process.
“It does vary depending on my mood,” he joked from his perch on the council dais, suggesting in a more serious vein: “Watch while I’m up here.”
Arbitration hearings are scheduled to resume today at 9:30am in council chambers at City Hall, 7351 Rosanna St. The all-day hearings are scheduled for Jan. 6 and 9 through 11, as well as March 6 and 8.
