Castle Rock, clerical union turn to mediation
Tuesday, April 24, 2007 6:33 AM PDT
By Barbara LaBoe
Printable version
E-mail this articleCASTLE ROCK --- The city and its newly formed clerical union are headed to mediation on their first-ever contract --- and workers rallied outside City Hall on Monday night to highlight their concerns.
"We're not here to negotiate, only to make the City Council understand our issues and, hopefully, do the right thing," said Brian King, the union's business representative. As he spoke 15 supporters walked in front of City Hall holding "We Want a Fair Contract" signs and sporting Teamsters Local 58 T-shirts.
Councilman Ed Smith, contacted after the rally, said the council has been fair.
"The only thing I can say is we think it's an extremely fair offer that we're giving them, ..." he said. "We're going to let the mediator handle it now."
King requested the mediation but said the city also agreed. Only one side needs to request mediation to trigger the nonbinding review by the state Public Employee Relations Commission.
Monday's council meeting was canceled for lack of a quorum. But King decided to go ahead with the demonstration anyway because fellow clerical workers and union members already were on their way from Kalama and Vancouver.
The union --- representing four city workers --- asked for recognition in June. Negotiations began in November. A tentative agreement was reached in March and ratified by the union.
"We thought we were done and had a fair contract then," King said.
The City Council, though, approved the contract but not the attached memorandum of understanding agreed upon in negotiations. The memo gave the workers $456 to $768 each to compensate for the January raise they would have received if they hadn't still been negotiating. The payments total $2,667.
King said voting down the memo invalidated the entire contract. He also said his workers shouldn't be penalized just because they organized and were negotiating.
"We don't see it that way," Smith said. "It's unfortunate that they believe they should get a bonus just for signing a contract."
The contract, without the memorandum bonus, includes a 5 percent raise for 2007 as well as raises between 2 and 4 percent for the next two years. Workers also will get a 2 percent cost-of-living adjustment each of those years and longevity bonuses that could increase their base salary. The base salaries --- with the 5 percent raise --- range from $30,576 to $38,184.
In January, the City Council gave department heads and police officers 10 to 16.8 percent raises, saying the increases were necessary to bring the workers in line with comparable cities and retain quality employees.
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