City Employees Rally Across City to Demand the City Fill Vacancies and Restore Vital Public Services

City Employees Rally Across City to Demand the City Fill Vacancies and Restore Vital Public Services

John Tucker

Over a seven-day period, more than 1,000 City workers showed up on their lunch breaks to rally together to demand that the City fill its more than 1,000 vacancies. “Rally Week” began on Tuesday, June 6th, at San Jose City Hall. Over 600 city hall staff turned out for a quick demonstration and marched around Civic Plaza, including marching around the back of the campus so the City Council – who was in chambers – could hear the chants and calls from city workers to “Staff Up San Jose!” and restore vital public services to our community.

City Moves 0.25%

City Moves 0.25%

John Tucker

On Wednesday, the City gave the Union’s bargaining team a counter proposal that included a quarter of a percent (0.25%) movement from their last proposal for a 3-year contract at 3.5%, 3.25%, and 3%. The City also rejected outright almost all of the remaining issues the Union had on the table. Things like real paid family leave, return of the 5% non-pensionable, PTO being counted towards overtime when mandated to work OT, retention pay, and so much more.

City "Leaders" Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds

City "Leaders" Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds

John Tucker

For the last few weeks, the City has been a broken record about how “disappointed they were” in city employees for not reducing our wage proposal. If you’ll recall, the City even attempted to strong-arm the Union using an illegal bargaining stunt and let us know they would refuse to have meaningful discussions on other topics until we showed movement on wages. In a good-faith effort to restart negotiations and get the City back to good-faith bargaining, the Union made some significant movement in our wage proposal to the City on Wednesday. We reduced our offer and proposed a three-year agreement with yearly wage increases of 8.5%, 8%, and 6.5%.

In an insulting, tone-deaf, but entirely predictable move…

The City Will Only Change Its Behavior If We Start Informing the Public of the Harm They Are Doing. It’s Imperative that You Attend At Least One of the Rallies Scheduled for the Week Of June 5th.

The City Will Only Change Its Behavior If We Start Informing the Public of the Harm They Are Doing. It’s Imperative that You Attend At Least One of the Rallies Scheduled for the Week Of June 5th.

John Tucker

It is clear to members of your Union bargaining team that logic, and doing the right thing don’t matter at the bargaining table or to the City’s management team. The City is taking what the Union is proposing and trying to achieve and then misrepresenting it to our City's leaders. That, or the City Council is truly not understanding the scope of the City’s staffing crisis and its effects on the public services.

At times like these, the only thing we have left to do is take power into our own hands, show that we have strength in numbers, and let the public know what’s going on so we can get them behind us too. Our jobs and communities depend on it. See our MEF events page for more information or RSVP now to sign up for a rally or two.

City Council instructs City’s bargaining team to break the law; then, in the worst possible way, the City tries to undo the damage.

City Council instructs City’s bargaining team to break the law; then, in the worst possible way, the City tries to undo the damage.

John Tucker

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…

City has ZERO ideas about fixing anything (insert shrug shoulder emoji)

City has ZERO ideas about fixing anything (insert shrug shoulder emoji)

John Tucker

 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.

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