2010-12-10 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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time I believe we have a take back on wages from employees. So, yes, given the state of the economy, the trend has been to look for areas where we could get take backs from the benefits that were provided to them through negotiations. One of the key components of collective bargaining is the parties not negotiate in the press. I’m not able to tell you what the proposals are for this round of negotiations exactly. That would kind of violate whatever terms of the principals of negotiating. But, yeah, it had been the trend to look for areas where we can take back from the employees. MS. NICHOLSON: I know we have a lot of questions. Does anybody else want to start onthe questions? MR. ARMOUR: Is it standard in government the two-year contracts? MR. TAKAHASHI: The law provides for two year contracts. The parties can agree to negotiate or redo contracts of longer periods. But it should be in two inaudible. The way the law is set up is that the odd number year shall begin July 1 of the odd number year and end June 30 of two years unless that parties agree to negotiate a longer contract. MS. NICHOLSON: I have sort of a general question. If the county is basically negotiating contracts parallel to the state and the other counties, I assume that there are a lot of fixed things like number of work hours. Things that are common in all contracts across the board. What would be the primary variables from one contract to another contract? In other words, what are you really negotiating on, because a lot of things must be common in sort of boiler plate in all the contracts. What are the primary things that you really are able to negotiate on? MR. TAKAHASHI: Like I said, it’s not only wages and hours. We also talk about terms and conditions of employment. Like the SHOPO, police agreement, deal with operation of things that apply just to police, like their 24-hour shifts. How we deal with that; if there are any premiums for working double shifts, and things of that nature. Firefighters have all kinds of premium for their 24-hour operations. United Public Workers in baseyards and central pickup points. There are numerous things that apply to operations for that specific group of employees. Other than that the wages, hours –I mean different wages for the different bargaining units, but the hours, you’re right, primarily the same. But we negotiate those special and unique situations for the various employee groups that we have. MS. NICHOLSON: So all counties would have, in say one collective bargaining unit, all the counties would have the same contract? MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes. We have what we call a master agreement. This is the police contract, so all four counties are parties to this master agreement with the police union. So, all terms and conditions of employment and negotiate as the employee group with the union in this one master agreement that’s applicable to all four jurisdictions, to all four counties. The law allows for each jurisdiction or employer, to negotiate supplemental agreements with the union which would apply only to a specific jurisdiction like ours. We have a master, and we are allowed to negotiate supplemental 4