City Rejects Deal to Restore Laid Off Employees in Exchanging For Forgiving PERB Rules Backpay –
Chris Kassis, 54, has been working since he was 16 years old. In November of 2008, he decided to get out of a very lucrative position, owning his own construction company, and came to work for the city at a somewhat lower rate of pay.
“I had a great job,” Mr. Kassis said. “I now make about 25 bucks an hour, about 53,000 a year, plus the cash out. I was making quite a bit more where I was before when I left. But I didn’t like it, that’s why I left.”
Chris Kassis sits on the negotiation team for DCEA (Davis City Employees Association), having worked in the position called Facilities Maintenance I, which works on building maintenance, for over three and a half years.
Two weeks ago he learned that he will be laid off at the end of this month. Mr. Kassis describes this as a shocking time.
“Disillusioning,” he told the Vanguard. “Lost a lot of sleep over it of course. Matter of fact, I wake up at two in the morning and don’t go back to sleep.”
“Don’t know how to feel,” he said. “Am I pissed? Yeah.”
He directs his anger towards the city for what he calls, “their lack of respect for people.”
But he is actually one of the fortunate ones. Because his wife has a good job, he is not facing the loss of his home.
“I’m the lucky one,” he said. “My wife has a great job so I can make it through this. Some of these other people, they rely on this to pay their… house payments.”
The city has reportedly turned down concessions offered by DCEA. Dave Owen, the President, informed the Vanguard of this on Wednesday, and on Thursday morning Mr. Kassis confirmed it.
Mr. Kassis told the Vanguard, “We offered them up the concessions when they lost their [PERB] appeal the other day.
“We told them that we’ll forgive you the money but you have to bring back the nine positions, make the other positions whole and you have to guarantee us no layoffs for the term of the next contract.”
“They came back and said ‘no,’ ” Mr. Kassis said. “We’re not a bunch of ‘we want everything’ but you can’t take that much from some of these people.”
The city has since released the offers and counter-offers.
On June 15th, DCEA offered to forego any remedy from the PERB decision in exchange for: l) a rescission ofthe layoffs; 2) a guarantee of no future layoffs; 3) an agreement by the City to implement a system of binding arbitration for all future grievances and disciplinary matters; and 4) payment of DCEA’s attorneys’ fees incurred during the PERB proceedings. In addition, DCEA expected the City to revoke the economic concessions imposed in 2010.
On June 20th, the City informed DCEA that it could not agree to DCEA’s demands. Specifically, the City will not agree to a system of binding arbitration as part of a settlement of an entirely unrelated PERB matter. More important, the City cannot agree to DCEA’s demand for a guarantee of no future layoffs. This is because the City is currently engaged in negotiations with DCEA for additional concessions. If those negotiations are unsuccessful, layoffs remain a possibility. Further, the City’s must maintain its right to implement layoffs in the event its financial situation deteriorates further.
While the City could not agree to DCEA’s demands, the City did provide DCEA a counteroffer to avoid the layoffs. The City offered DCEA the following: l) the City will rescind the layoffs associated with the PERB decision; 2) DCEA must forego the backpay remedy in the PERB decision; and 3) DCEA must agree to continue with the terms and conditions imposed by the City in 2010.
One of the central questions that people have asked is whether those laid off would prefer the concessions to layoffs.
“I feel that if you’re going to let people go, it’s worth nine people taking a hit than 30 people losing their houses,” he told the Vanguard. He stressed repeatedly that he was merely speaking for himself and he reminded the Vanguard that he was in a different situation than some of his colleagues.
“I’m willing to take the hit so that other people don’t have to take that kind of hit,” he said. “But that’s just me, I can’t speak for the other people.”
At this point he says, if the city will not make the deal, he wants his money back.
“By gosh, I’m not going to give them their money back and then two months later they… lay me off again,” he said.
It is not that Mr. Kassis is oblivious to the problems of the city. As he says, “I can’t certainly understand part of it, but there are other parts I can’t understand.”
“Do I think the city needs to do some stuff? Yeah,” he acknowledged. But he thinks the city wants it all at once and “what they want from some people is just unreasonable. For me it’s about a 30% cut, that’s completely unreasonable. I think the pain should be felt equally by all the employees.”
At the same time, he acknowledges that he does not know exactly how to go about doing that.
One of the big problems, according to Mr. Kassis, is the city’s goal of reducing cafeteria cash outs from about $1500 per month down to $500 per month.
He believes that if the city goes to $500 per month, people will go to double coverage on health insurance and the city will not get the savings that they are projecting.
He argued that a 10 percent cut on health insurance would save the city nearly $200,000 for every hundred employees. At 15%, it would be closer to $300,000.
“You’re going to get more savings that way,” he said. “Then everybody’s the same.”
On top of that, he said, “They want us to pay 8% of PERS. Which they pay it because we gave up raises . They want us to pay three percent of the employer side.”
In addition, he said, “They want us to take a 5% salary reduction and a 1.25% [cut] towards retiree health.”
Add all of that up for those employees that do not receive the cash out and it’s about a 17% pay cut. According to him, there has been no movement from the city on these demands from the start of negotiations.
He said, in terms of the cash out, DCEA’s breakdown, which he believes is similar to other bargaining units, 30 percent like him take the full cash out. Another 30% are somewhere between $250 and $750.
“Those people wouldn’t be affected that much,” he said. “The people that don’t take the cash out, they’re not affected at all.”
“You’re putting it all on 30% of the people,” Chris Kassis emphasized. “I don’t think people appreciate that.”
Facilities Maintenance covers a variety of different things. For one, it is responsible for overseeing the operations of over 200 drinking fountains in the city. It takes care of the plumbing in the parks buildings. They also do repairs to the city buildings, preventative maintenance on all of the air conditioners throughout the city. They also take care of graffiti.
They also covered the construction and redesign of the city manager’s office and the finance department.
“That was four people,” he said, doing all of that work, and now it will be three people covering that. He said the position has gone from taking care of buildings to a band-aid fixing position.
Chris Kassis noted, when he first came to the city, some of the disrepair of many of the buildings. For example, he said that on the senior center, all of the gutters have rotted out. All of the trim and the siding above the roofing tiles is rotting away.
“We don’t have the time to take care of those things,” he said. “There’s not enough people to take care of those things. That was the same way then [2008] as it is today. I can’t even go over to that building without shaking my head because I know how to fix it but we don’t have the time to fix it.”
The city put in new insulation into city hall as part of their energy savings program.
“But they haven’t fixed the roofs, so it… leaks on the new insulation,” he said. He said he’s angry because he doesn’t like to allow these kinds of problems to linger.
He is concerned about Davis’ parks. He lives in Sacramento and sees parks that are poorly maintained, with restrooms people would not want to use, fountains that do not work, and grass that is not properly trimmed or mowed regularly.
He just does not believe that the city can maintain even current levels of service through outsourcing and contracting with private parties.
“I’m not just complaining about myself,” he said. “Public employees get a bad rap. I always thought that too.”
He joked about Cal-Trans workers, where two guys watch another guy digging a hole, but he said, “It’s not that way for us.”
Chris Kassis says that even after he’s laid off he plans to remain on the negotiating team. “I feel that strongly about it,” he said. “This is not about me. I don’t even really have a dog in this fight anymore.”
The bitterness it seems comes from the fact that Mr. Kassis truly loved working for this city.
“Working for the city has been an overall wonderful experience and will always value the relationships I have formed. I am a better person for it,” he said.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
[b]Mr. Kassis told the Vanguard, “We offered them up the concessions when they lost their [PERB] appeal the other day. “We told them that we’ll forgive you the money but you have to bring back the nine positions, make the other positions whole and you have to guarantee us no layoffs for the term of the next contract. “They came back and said ‘no,'” Mr. Kassis said.[/b]
This is pretty much the deal I suggested that DCEA should have gone for. I think this puts the ball in Mr. Pinkerton’s court. I think the City Manager owes the people of Davis, not to mention the DCEA, a sincere explanation as to why this is a no-go.
I think it also points up something wrong with the approach that the Vanguard (and by extension the majority on the current City Council) have advocating since David Greenwald launched his campaign which he titled, “We have to make $2.5 million in cuts right now in order to prove that we are serious about this budget problem.”
What is wrong with that? It ends up with mass firings and a loss of services. It directly and very seriously harms these 9 people who (as far as we know) did their jobs perfectly well, but are now out of work. And it still fails to solve the real problems, which are inside the labor contracts.
What Sue Greenwald advocated (and I seconded) would have avoided this sort of situation. Sue’s ideas would have still caused serious pain–getting rid of most of the cafeteria cash-outs, for one thing. But they would have retained all the city services, and even in areas where the City could save money through consolidation of management or outsourcing or just dealing with less (as with the 33% extra employees we have in the DFD), it would have been possible to allow these savings to come in gradually, as people retired or left for other reasons. In my view, firing a person who did nothing wrong, whose work was necessary, is a terrible thing.
And thus every time I read the Vanguard’s advocacy for the “We have to make $2.5 million in cuts right now in order to prove that we are serious about this budget problem” campaign, I cringed for people like the tree trimmers and Mr. Kassis.
Mr Rifkin’s idea was put on the table. It appears that my prediction was generally accurate, as to how the city would respond. Mr Rifkin’s proposal was reasonably sound, on both a fiscal and fairness basis.
Mr Rifkin is mainly correct, but it is not [i][b]only[/b][/i] in the CM’s court, but also in the court of those 5 people who sit on the dais many Tuesday nights. There are now two “lame ducks” on that body. Perhaps we will need to wait for the new incoming Council to decide how to proceed.
[quote]”I feel that if you’re going to let people go, it’s worth nine people taking a hit than 30 people losing their houses,” he told the Vanguard.
“For me it’s about a 30% cut, that’s completely unreasonable. I think the pain should be felt equally by all the employees.”
[/quote]
These two statements seem antithetical to each other…
Rich:
In fairness, this approach is not what I have advocated for at all. (A) It assumes that I wouldn’t have accepted the agreement. (B) Within the $2.5 million, I argued we begin with management and fire not rank and file employees.
Still looking for 3 member crews on the fire truck.
“Within the $2.5 million, I argued we begin with management and fire not rank and file employees.”
But it never happens that way, does it David ?
A ten to fifteen percent paycut to department heads and the management bargaining unit along with a reduction to three members engines would have gotten us to the $2.5 million. The rest can be accomplished through reforming retirement health, PERS, and cash outs.
The city’s counter offer was to rehire the DCEA employees but without any guarantee that they wouldn’t layoff anyone in the future.
So the truth comes out now. It’s not about the City Manager trying to “save” the city from the $800,000 PERB Rules payback is it? There is NO excuse now for the City Manager to refuse to restore these jobs that he just cut. The City Manager is clearly trying to wipe out the jobs of our City Services employees who actually do a great job for our community. Yet, he is not willing to cut the over-abundance of $100,000+ per year salaried “Administrator” jobs that the City has.
So why do we need so many Administrators when there will be no City Services Staff employees for them to “administrate” over after this lay-off carnage by the City Manager?
Rifkin “This is pretty much the deal I suggested that DCEA should have gone for. I think this puts the ball in Mr. Pinkerton’s court. I think the City Manager owes the people of Davis, not to mention the DCEA, a sincere explanation as to why this is a no-go.”
I don’t believe this was much of a surprise to many. The former council passed up a supremely qualified candidate who had a firm grasp on government finance for a City Manager who they could manipulate. I think they could have achieved this for less than $200,000 though. There are plenty of people who lack a moral compass. Ask any line worker in Manteca what they think of our new City Manager. No one in good coincidence can deny that some structural change is necessary, but it is cowardly and short-sided to focus the bulk of the cuts from the ones who actually provide most of the necessary services. Rich, will we be seeing a critique of our new city manager in the Op-Ed section soon?
[quote]So why do we need so many Administrators when there will be no City Services Staff employees for them to “administrate” over after this lay-off carnage by the City Manager?[/quote]
Perhaps some of those manager position have been targeting for elimination?
RE:
E Musser Roberts:
“Perhaps some of those manager position have been targeting for elimination?”
Well why not cut out the “fat” of those high paying jobs first rather then the lower salaried service employees that we really need?
[quote]”In November of 2008, he decided to get out of a very lucrative position, owning his own construction company….”[/quote]Good decision. Now probably also is a good time to get back into his very lucrative construction company.
This isn’t just about nine people. The “union” should consider the many more who’ll lose their jobs unless all agree to a drastic cutback in benefits. It’s worth keeping health care, given the CalPers “low-cost” value it provides.
But, paying people beyond the insurance costs and paying people who don’t accept the health insurance plan has to stop. How many jobs would that one change save?
Michael H. is correct in pushing the three-person fire crew, just as Rich has for so long. Get’er done.
[b][quote]”City Rejects Deal to Restore Laid Off Employees in Exchanging For Forgiving PERB Rules Backpay”[/quote][/b] David, did you get this confirmed by Pinkerton or someone else in authority?
The city is disputing some of it and sending out some kind of release this evening. So we will have an update probably in the AM.
So here is an excerpt from the City’s Press Release that clarifies the offer:
[quote]On June 15m, DCEA offered to forego any remedy from the PERB decision in exchange for: l) a rescission ofthe layoffs; 2) a guarantee of no future layoffs; 3) an agreement by the City to implement a system of binding arbitration for all future grievances and disciplinary matters; and 4) payment of DCEA’s attorneys’ fees incurred during the PERB proceedings. In addition, DCEA expected the City to revoke the economic concessions imposed in 2010.
On June 20th, the City informed DCEA that it could not agree to DCEA’s demands. Specifically, the City will not agree to a system of binding arbitration as part of a settlement of an entirely unrelated PERB matter. More important, the City cannot agree to DCEA’s demand for a guarantee of no future layoffs. This is because the City is currently engaged in negotiations with DCEA for additional concessions. If those negotiations are unsuccessful, layoffs remain a possibility. Further, the City’s must maintain its right to implement layoffs in the event its financial situation deteriorates further.
While the City could not agree to DCEA’s demands, the City did provide DCEA a counteroffer to avoid the layoffs. The City offered DCEA the following: l) the City will rescind the layoffs associated with the PERB decision; 2) DCEA must forego the backpay remedy in the PERB decision; and 3) DCEA must agree to continue with the terms and conditions imposed by the City in 2010.[/quote]
To clarify this, Dave Owen spoke with me earlier and had basically the same recounting of the offer/ counteroffer. So there is no dispute here.
Main story is now updated.
[i]”l) a rescission ofthe layoffs; 2) a guarantee of no future layoffs; [b]3) an agreement by the City to implement a system of binding arbitration for all future grievances and disciplinary matters;[/b] and 4) payment of DCEA’s attorneys’ fees incurred during the PERB proceedings. [b]In addition, DCEA expected the City to revoke the economic concessions imposed in 2010[/b].”[/i]
I do agree with the CM that those parts I have copied in bold font are deal killers (and were not originally mentioned as a part of this story).
However, I think a fairer counter-offer (which is not too late, because the layoffs, AFAIK, are not effective until June 30) would allow for 1, 2 and 4.
Obviously, any agreement has to have part 1–rescinding the 9 layoffs.
Part 2, a guarantee of no future layoffs, seems to me eminently reasonable as long as the next MOU caps the growth of total comp for the DCEA as a whole at a growth level which is in line with the revenue growth to the City.
Part 3 is a non-starter. Binding arbitration takes away all power on behalf of the City to impose its terms; and the only way the City’s budget ever becomes sustainable (short of a bankruptcy judge imposing terms) is going to be for the City to impose its terms (with the possibility that doing so will encourage the bargaining units to agree to most of the reforms for the long run).
Part 4 is about fairness. The City is 100% at fault for the PERB case. The City should pay the DCEA’s lawyer bill for the case, especially so if the DCEA members are amenable to not charging the City the $804,000 that the City owes the members of the DCEA.
The fact that the DCEA still wants the economic concessions imposed in 2010 revoked makes me think that, at this point, the DCEA is not really serious about saving those 9 jobs. Hopefully, I am wrong about that and this is a negotiating tactic of some sort. But on its face it suggests the DCEA is not serious about a compromise or maybe that its members really don’t understand that the economic concessions imposed in 2010 were very, very small compared to what really needs to be done to make Davis a sustainable City.
Maybe, and i could be wrong, the DCEA was waiting to hear a ‘plan’, at the start of negotiations, as in we are going to trim the fat here, and we need concessions here, because….., not agree to these concessions then we will come up with a plan and negotiate a contract. It seems a lot that happened, and continues to happen is based on what the public perception is about what needs to be done.
In the meantime, the City Manager has been attributed to statements that:
there will be 29 “layoffs” in the 2012/13 budget (source, DE, today, and not clear if it includes the nine positions where employees have already received notices, or any vacant positions [not technically layoffs]); and, that medical benefit cost will rise from “7% of payroll to 20% of payroll” (ibid.). That means, if payroll stayed the same, medical costs would be increasing by almost 200% – this is not credible.
Positions are proposed to be added in Finance & CMO.
It will be interesting to see what additional info the City will provide in the coming days/weeks.
It is not clear if those #’s presuppose the full concessions the City is apparently seeking.
[quote]The fact that the DCEA still wants the economic concessions imposed in 2010 revoked makes me think that, at this point, the DCEA is not really serious about saving those 9 jobs.[/quote]
And that point is pretty much backed up by the DCEA’s own words, or dgm’s paraphrasing of the DCEA’s own words:
[quote]”I feel that if you’re going to let people go, it’s worth nine people taking a hit than 30 people losing their houses,” he told the Vanguard.
“For me it’s about a 30% cut, that’s completely unreasonable. I think the pain should be felt equally by all the employees.” [/quote]
Those are direct quotes Elaine