City, unions headed to showdown over binding arbitration
Gilroy – All seven City Council members have endorsed a November ballot measure that could grant residents veto power over binding arbitration decisions, including the outcome of now-deadlocked labor negotiations between City Hall and Fire Local #2805.
The measure would allow councilmen to declare an arbitrator’s decision harmful to the city’s financial health and to send the matter to voters for final approval. Council’s unanimous support for such a measure, reached during an hour of informal policy discussions Friday, must be ratified at an Aug. 1 meeting in order to make the registrar’s deadline for the November ballot.
The consensus over the ballot measure comes after months of heightening rhetoric by Mayor Al Pinheiro and fellow councilmen about the potential impact of arbitration on city finances. The debate gained poignancy Friday, when City Attorney Linda Callon informed councilmen that a November ballot measure could be worded in such a way as to affect pending arbitration proceedings, scheduled to begin in January 2006.
“It has nothing to do with trying to pick on one group or another,” Pinheiro said in opening remarks to the discussion. “It has everything to do with local control. … and determining priorities of how we spend our funds. … When we as a council have that power taken away and have it given to someone not responsible to voters, then we have lost local control.
“At the end of the day,” he added, “we want to be fair to the individuals, but we also want to be able to balance our checkbook.”
Police officer Frank Bozzo, who headed the campaign that pushed through binding arbitration 17 years ago, took issue with the council’s position.
“I think you looked at one side of arbitration – the stuff that’s typically fed to councils to do away with it,” Bozzo said. “Back in 1988, the council underestimated their labor groups and the citizens of this city, and they lost severely.”
Asked if the fire union would target incumbent councilmen this fall for jeopardizing binding arbitration, union vice president Mike Ordaz said, “No doubt. This is a political issue.”
Councilmen Bob Dillon, Craig Gartman and Charles Morales have all declared their intention to seek re-election this fall. The political consequences of placing a binding arbitration measure on the same ballot as their own names did not elude them.
“Well, you got a guy here that was endorsed by police and fire and appreciates it, and is running in a couple months,” Dillon said of himself. “And yet, to be frank, I’m a little annoyed with the fire union’s request for a benefits package. … I wish they would come back to the bargaining table to settle this before it reaches a binding arbitrator.”
Council members took two unofficial “straw polls” to gauge support for one of three options: leaving binding arbitration in tact, proposing a ballot measure that would repeal it, or proposing a measure that would give voters final say on an arbitrator’s decision. They dubbed the last the “vote model.”
Dillon indicated he would support full repeal of binding arbitration, but expressed preference for the vote model. Councilmen Gartman and Morales voted against full repeal, embracing the third option instead as a compromise.
In explaining his stance, Gartman laid out Gilroy’s history with binding arbitration. Since it was instituted in the late ’80s, the dispute resolution procedure has been invoked five times. Of those, four have involved disciplinary issues. The only time city officials and union members have reached a stalemate over contractual issues was in 1999. At that time, the arbitrator awarded the fire department minimum staffing levels for fire engines, but rejected most of their other requests, including a retirement package that would allow them to leave work at age 50 with 90 percent of their salary. Police have successfully negotiated that retirement package, along with various salary and benefit increases that firefighters say they missed out on in 2001, when their first labor dispute was resolved. They are now demanding equal treatment, but city officials claim union demands would sink the city budget and lead to major cutbacks.
Mayor Al Pinheiro warned councilmen about the dangers of politicizing arbitration decisions by giving voters final say.
“If we use the vote model,” he said, “we’ve spent money going to binding arbitration and now it no longer becomes anything but a campaign about who’s got the most money to put out the word.”
But Gartman saw the threat of voter ratification as a source of leverage for the city.
“The union may win the battle with an arbitrator, but they might not win the battle with the public,” he reasoned. “This could keep them from going to arbitration and get them back to the table.”
Pinheiro eventually supported the vote model to show a unified council position, but only after appealing to council members to reconsider outright elimination during their official vote, scheduled for Aug. 1.
Ordaz promised that the local fire union’s efforts to defeat the ballot measure would receive backing from the national firefighters’ union. He did not see voter approval of arbitration decisions as a compromise, but rather as a dangerous precedent.
“Every time (we reach impasse), we’re going to go spend money taking it back to the voters?” Ordaz asked. “They’re saying take it to the citizens. Well, then why don’t we sit down with them and negotiate?”
