LA City Workers.com – City of LA Blog

The Famous Friday Drop.

After everyones gone home for the night, surprise an email pops up near 9Pm.

In the Excuse filled email the latest contract agreement.

After carefully reviewing the New Revised Draft Agreement which supercedes are previous ERIP, and our current contract, one thing is clear.  Were Still Screwed!

We were fed half holidays unpaid, which came up to a couple hours, now we are forced to randomly take 3.5 hours Every Single pay period.

Coalition members will be Willingly Furloughed nearly Two Weeks – 59.5 Hours

Bonuses no longer compound losing there importance and recognition of the hazardous life threatening duties performed Costing Workers Thousands! LAPD Officers Would NEVER tolerate this.

NO CASH OVERTIME – Comp time only. Federal Limit of 240 hours.

NO RAISES – EAA MEMBERS GOT THERE RAISES

There are no Real tangible savings other then the Furloughs.

We continue to put off Real cost savings which will only make us suffer in the long term putting everyone’s future at risk. If the council isn’t told no you can’t continue to spend in this fashion, one day we will wake up to a headline blasting City of Los Angeles files for bankruptcy.

It is up to us to be responsible and Vote NO on this deal the furloughs are a given, but risking our financial future on the hope the city will magically come up with money in the next year and not spend it on more cops is foolish.

Consider this, LA City council instead of actually saving money by canceling the Police Academy Class has only delayed it in the hopes that if we give back all of these things in our contract we will allow them to continue spending at an unsustainable rate. No Other Union has had to give up this much, why are we giving away so much?

Paying more for Early Retirement and adding these latest concessions will leave us far behind other workers, and Sworn will continue to make out like bandits.

We Do NOT have to keep shouldering the costs for early retirements and our failed unions desperate attempt to save face.

Look at the numbers and the long term consequences of this deal.

If We VOTE NO:

We Get a +3.0% Retro Raise

We GET another 2.75% Raise in Two Months

We Keep our CASH Overtime.

We KEEP our pride, and our contract whole.

We will still have a contract after the economy improves, and we will be able to negotiate things that will prevent using employee wages as a savings account.

If we Don’t we are opening ourselves up to continued abuse and more of the same.

Employees will not have there retirement increased without proper bargaining.

If we Vote Yes we are setting ourselves back 30 years.

We are going to allow the city to transfer people against there will, we are hurting everything as a collective bargaining group we are suppose to stand for.

Stop getting used as an ATM.

SEIU Local 1000 scores a Furlough Victory!

State fund insurance workers will Get back pay and interest for the furlough days taken ruled Superior Court Judge Charlotte Walter Woolard today.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger imposed mandatory furloughs on nearly all State workers earlier this year, SEIU Local 1000 filed five cases on the furlough issues and four are yet to be decided.

SEIU claimed furloughs would amount to a cutback of staff, State Fund employees are exempted from ” hiring freezes and staff cutbacks” in the states Insurance Code ruled Judge Wollard.

State officials would not say if they planned on appealing the ruling.

City of Los Angeles workers will not be affected by today’s ruling as it does not cover any employees outside of the State workers compensation Fund, the City of Los Angeles is self insured for workers compensation and is operated by LA city employees in the Personnel Department.

If this isn’t the agenda of all agendas, Tuesday the most important group of people in city politics will get legal advice on overturning the furloughs and ending or accepting ERIP among other issues.

Members: Antonio R. Villaraigosa, Mayor

Eric Garcetti, President of the Council
Jan Perry, President Pro Tempore
Bernard C. Parks, Chair, Budget and Finance Committee
Dennis P. Zine, Chair, Personnel Committee
(Any interested Council Member may attend)

The City Attorney requests Closed Session pursuant to Government Code Sections 54956.9(a) and/or (b) to allow the Committee to confer with its legal counsel subject to the attorney/client privilege on the following matters:

2. Legal Advice Relative to Status of Tentative Agreement with the Coalition of City Unions, Including the Early Retirement Incentive Program (ERIP)

3. Legal Advice Relative to Furloughs


Closed Session: Conference with Labor Negotiator / City Management Representation, or Designee, (pursuant to California Government Code § 54957.6) concerning consultations and discussions with representatives of the relevant employee organizations regarding:

4. Status Report and Instructions to Negotiators on Sworn Negotiations

5. Memorandum of Understanding Amendment for Fire Chief Officers

Los Angeles Prepares for Layoffs Erip R.I.P.

With the very real possibility of furloughs getting rescinded after a federal appeals judge ruled unconstitutional the Furlough plan implemented by Prince George County.

General Managers are now tasked with making new financial assumptions or resorting to previous layoff lists established to meet the current budgets savings.

Departments have made assumptions on personnel prior to the ERIP savings, it is unknown if there will be additional names and classifications posted to this list and if departments will be forced to generate new lists of classifications to notify for layoffs.  These Layoff Lists are available for download in the Forums section   for most departments.

Laying off employees would start at the top and work it’s way down, since the bumping rights of senior workers would take effect. Seniority will pay off for many workers who will see vacancies at the top open up with a normal attrition rate of workers retiring and with the layoffs. Layoff Process per classification takes nearly 6 months.

Workers with less then 1 year of service could be in jeopardy if there classification is chosen for layoffs, but then Proprietary departments may choose to absorb the best candidates from those laid off as seniority and proprietary hiring are not mutually inclusive. Proprietary departments will still maintain the right to review personnel folders of candidates from what we have learned unlike other city departments.

ERIP, R.I.P.   SEIU has sent out a desperate email to it’s members acknowledging the pending demise of the ERIP plan, you might remember there previous email clearly stated everything was fine and the Mayor CAO Council LACERS and Santa Claus were to blame for the mistakes, possibly misleading there members to hide the fact ERIP was so flawed and destined to fail or bankrupt LACERS.

If SEIU was so wrong on the state of the ERIP, and the outrage from it’s members could they actually publicly support a new Vote with individual options to select on how people would like to “share the sacrifice” run by the city clerk without there biased voting form and misleading propaganda?

We must work together on these issues we must have the facts and we must be allowed a free vote untarnished by the manipulation of the unions or the city.

Council should make a motion calling for the city clerk to prepare voting materials for all vested city employees clearly explaining the options and allowing the members to have a Real Vote on what our future holds.

If all members were given a voice we could actually stomach the sacrifices that lay ahead for us.

We have worked very long and hard, been in contact with several council members, and we have published numerous articles on this issue.

It looks like our message has finally gotten through.

As always we failed to get any mention by the la times reporter on the story but that’s ok members of our site know we had a major role in this uprising.  We said it and have been for a while.

Here is the article. Thanks for the quote david.

Pension repayment plan could throw L.A.’s budget into disarray

The system’s general manager urges ‘prudent’ repayment in 5 years, not 15. The money would come from employees or the city’s general fund.

By David Zahniser
August 3, 2009

A high-level Los Angeles pension official has recommended that the city pay off the cost of an employee early retirement package 10 years sooner than previously planned — a move that threatens to throw the city’s budget into disarray.

Hoping to slash payroll costs and eliminate a $530-million budget shortfall, the City Council gave tentative approval last month to a deal that provides early retirement to 2,400 workers who belong to the Coalition of L.A. City Unions.

That agreement called for the city’s pension fund to be reimbursed over 15 years for the cost of giving retirement benefits ahead of schedule. The money was expected to come largely from higher retirement contributions from the remaining workforce.

But Sally Choi, general manager of the Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System, recommended Friday that her agency’s board require repayment within five years. Choi told the board, which is scheduled to vote today, that the faster payment schedule would be “more fiscally prudent,” based on a recently completed review of the plan.

The resulting higher payments would hike the cost of the city’s retirement package by at least $33.7 million in July 2010, the first year of payment. To cover that higher cost, city officials would be left with two choices: demand a considerably higher contribution from city employees or tap the city’s general fund, which is used to pay for police, fire protection and other basic services.
“This is not good news for the unions,” Councilman Dennis Zine said. “This is not good news for those who thought they had a deal for early retirement.”

The union coalition, which represents 22,000 employees, launched a last-minute lobbying effort against Choi’s recommendation Sunday, calling her recommendation “irresponsible” and saying that it would harm the city’s ability to deliver services. In a letter to board members, six union leaders said a 15-year payment schedule would be fiscally prudent.

Choi’s “recommendation is not only ill-timed and ill-conceived, but threatens to further burden city coffers in these extraordinarily hard economic times,” they wrote.

Choi said the pension board’s primary responsibility is to safeguard the financial health of the retirement system, which is charged with delivering benefits to 15,000 retired employees and 30,000 active employees. Any effort to relieve the city’s budget woes should be secondary, she said.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who selects four of the pension board’s seven members, plans to ask the board to delay a vote on the payment schedule. Mayoral spokesman Matt Szabo repeated Villaraigosa’s support for early retirement, which he hailed last month as a way to cut costs by $500 million within two years.

“The mayor continues to believe that an early retirement package is better than layoffs,” Szabo said. “The question now is, how much will it cost and how much will we save?”

City officials fear that a five-year repayment plan would cost so much that it would no longer save enough money to bring the city’s budget into balance.

The City Council still must cast two more votes on the early retirement deal. On Friday, it received a report from a city-hired actuary who looked at two early retirement scenarios, one that involves the departure of 2,229 employees and another involving 2,763.

Under the second scenario, the five-year payment schedule could increase the cost of the retirement package by $48.9 million in the first year of payment, according to a report issued to the pension board.

Choi said the payments to the pension fund should occur only during the period when the city is deriving the cost savings from a smaller workforce. Choi said the actuary defined that period as five years.

The coalition’s members ratified the early retirement plan last week, partly as a way of shielding themselves from layoffs and furloughs. As part of the agreement, workers agreed to increase their employee contribution from 6% to 6.75% starting in July 2011.

If city workers had to cover the cost of early retirement within five years, their contribution would increase to 8.86%. Under the more aggressive retirement scenario — the one allowing 2,763 workers to leave — the employee contribution would jump to 10.7%.

Coalition spokeswoman Barbara Maynard said early retirement would provide a benefit to the city over 15 years, not five.

Maynard warned that the coalition’s members have no intention of contributing more toward their retirement.

“We are not going to reopen the agreement that we just ratified,” she said.

Based on the current debate, Councilman Bernard C. Parks said he would have “grave difficulty” in moving ahead with early retirement.

Councilwoman Jan Perry said she was alarmed by the latest developments but did not yet know what the council’s next step should be.

“Obviously, putting ourselves in a deeper hole would not be a viable option,” she said.

david.zahniser@latimes.com