2019-04-24 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board April 24, 2019 and desires and goals for their unit. And what the information that was provided to us was that the union was getting a lot of push back from the independent units saying that when the group bargains collectively—all together—their independent goals aren’t being addressed. So, they, kind of, get caught up in the overall big picture discussion. So, their members wanted them— they ratified that they go and negotiate independently. So, we don’t have control. They are identified as independent unions—units under the HRS. So, we’re pretty much just dealing with it as we go. The—some of the requests are anywhere from—some of the units want us—want them to be— want a decision or an award similar to what UPW got, which is 2% and step increase. Some of them are asking for 6% increases, so it varies—the wants, the asks, or across-the-board. And we’ll just have to deal with it. Hopefully—well—I’ll tell you what the problem is—is this lump sum bonus has really thrown a wrench in the negotiations. You give one—that’s okay. You give a second one—all of a sudden that’s precedent. CHR. NAMAHOE: Yeah, right. MR. BRILHANTE: So, now, before, each of these guys want that same type of consideration. So, that seems—that’s the problematic area. So, we’ll be doing HGEA starting in August. So that, kind of, affects our budget because what happens is once the award is issued and ratified, then our staff has to go in and do—it’s called a retro of all the pay adjustments. So, everybody who is awarded higher salary under the new collective bargaining agreement, we go back to the last day of the old agreement, which is July stst 31. And then effective July 1 we’re going to have to change everybody’s salary to give them the effective increases. So, that’s a task—that’s additional work for our staff, so that wasn’t really well received. But it is what it is and, fortunately, I have a great staff and they’ll accommodate—they have, in the past. So, that’s for HGEA. UPW which is the largest group of employees in the County as well as the State, they’re under a four-year contract, but in their four-year contract—after the first two years, they had a provision for a re-opening—re-opener. And that re-opener was to give consideration to the fact that UPW does not get step increases. All their employees in the unit, in a particular job class, get the same pay no matter how long they’ve been working in that position—and that’s something that the union bargained for—that was—they want that. So, they wanted that. So, they don’t get step increases. So, what we did was—and this was prior to me coming on board—was the employer and the union agreed to do a one-time recalculation of the salary or a salary adjustment after the two-year period of time in order to allow for an alternative mechanism for a step increase. So, that was on the table. We started meeting about a month ago regarding how much that one-time reallocation was going to be. Page 6