Bargaining on Wednesday was unbelievable…

First, some necessary background. For those that don’t already know, for these negotiations, instead of using the Office of Employee Relations team, the City contracted with a Union-busting law firm and high-priced lawyers to negotiate against us – the City’s staff. The City is paying its chief negotiator $345 an hour and has agreed to give this law firm up to $424,500 to fight against City workers. Imagine if the City valued its workforce the same way it valued the people they hire to negotiate against our interests. What a community that would be.

Okay, are you sufficiently irritated yet? Good, us too. Now back to Wednesday…

 Colleagues,

Today, your MEF Union bargaining team met with the City for another round of negotiations.

Once again, the Union showed up ready to have honest conversations about solutions to the endemic recruitment and retention plaguing the City. The City – not surprisingly – did NOT show up prepared to discuss any of that. The City continued to bury its head in the sand and pretend the current crisis is nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence.

On Tuesday, April 25th, a couple of hundred members of MEF Local 101, Local 21, and ABMEI met outside of City Hall and marched into City Council chambers together. Their plan was simple, deliver a petition over 75 feet long that contained the names and signatures of over 2,000 City workers!

The petition had a straightforward message…

Your MEF Local 101 Bargaining Team met with the City on April 26th and FINALLY received a wage proposal from them. In a disappointing but unfortunately not surprising move, the City only proposed a 3% wage increase in each of the next three years...

Unfortunately, the City remains willfully tone-deaf and doesn’t understand the

We’ve placed advertisements on buses all over the City to help educate our residents about the ongoing vacancy problem and some of the impacts that has on them.

If you happen to see one, grab a photo and tag us on social media and your location. Or email us at staffupsanjose.org

Keep an eye out on your TV, too, for your colleagues taking to the television screen to talk to residents in their living rooms about the vacancy problem and on them to take action to Staff Up San Jose!

Your MEF – AFSCME Local 101 Bargaining Team met again with City leadership today and made additional proposals to address the City's vacancies problem and lack of ability to recruit and retain staff. Today, our proposals focused on recruitment, and we made the following proposals.