Gilroy
– Engineers, secretaries and scores of others who keep the city
running on a daily basis are worried that their chances for better
salary and benefits could be threatened by a new pay package for
their bosses and a gloomy budget forecast.
Gilroy – Engineers, secretaries and scores of others who keep the city running on a daily basis are worried that their chances for better salary and benefits could be threatened by a new pay package for their bosses and a gloomy budget forecast.
Many of City Hall’s 270 employees crammed into council chambers Tuesday afternoon to learn about a new pay system for their 40 nonunionized supervisors. Council signed off on the program – which spells $200,000 in immediate annual costs – two weeks before learning that substantial cutbacks might be needed to avoid erasing the city’s $27 million reserve fund in the next few years.
The city’s financial state is of keen interest to the 150-plus employees who make up Gilroy’s biggest union, Local 101 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union’s contract expires June 30 and it is now in the midst of labor talks with City Hall.
“People were asking questions (at the meeting) and looking to see what’s in store for us,” said Steve Ynzunza, an emergency dispatch supervisor and president of Local 101. “Police have their contract signed. Fire has their contract signed. With the money issues and stuff like that, now what’s left for us?”
Ynzunza is not the only one worried about the city’s biggest union getting its fair share of the city budget. Councilman Russ Valiquette, who agonized over the new pay system before helping push it to victory in a 5-1-1 vote, warned that “one group’s going to be left behind” under the new “best of the best” formula.
The new system links manager pay hikes to the best raise negotiated by any one of Gilroy’s three unions. It also calls for police captains and other supervisors to always earn at least 15 percent more than their subordinates and 10 percent more than the average pay for their position, based on a comparison with nearby cities. Council approved the policy as a way to recruit and retain top managers and to solve “morale” issues in the police department, where some unionized police sergeants are earning more than police captains who are ineligible for overtime.
The system meant instant raises for nearly half of the city’s exempt employees. The top raise of nearly $15,000 went to City Clerk Rhonda Pellin, while the next highest pay bumps of $13,789 each went to Finance Director Cindy Murphy and Human Resources Director LeeAnn McPhillips, both recently promoted to the level of department heads.
City managers and AFSCME employees have trailed public safety workers in the area of wage increases, according to figures from City Administrator Jay Baksa.
The city’s so-called “miscellaneous” employees have traded pay hikes for improved retirement benefits in recent years, Baksa said, though their deals do not compare to those afforded firefighters and police. Public safety employees, who typically have shorter careers, can retire in Gilroy as early as age 50 with 90 percent of their pay. Miscellaneous employees and their managers must work a decade or more beyond that age to retire with similar benefits.
Despite a bitter public backlash over the new pay system, Baksa defended the plan as a way to maintain equity and morale.
“I’m optimistic that (AFSCME) will be treated as fairly as all the other bargaining units in the city,” Baksa said. “That has been the experience of our labor negotiations. Nobody gets left out. Does everybody get the same? No. But going in, the council has always wanted to treat every bargaining unit fairly, and not at the expense of any other bargaining unit.”
City employees expect Baksa and city council to make good on that pledge.
“We want to be treated fairly and be given the same consideration management staff has been given,” said one city worker who commented on condition of anonymity. “The city council had stated that no one employee is more important or valuable than any other. We would like them to back that statement up with their pocketbook.”
