City workers return to their jobs today
Strike suspended after seven days; city and labor unions agree to continue contract negotiations with a mediator
OAKLAND >> Striking Oakland city employees announced late Monday that they would be back on the job today, after a work stoppage that shut down city services for seven days.
“While we didn’t settle a contract tonight, city negotiators have adopted a new tone and demonstrated openness to continue negotiations,” said Felipe Cuevas, president of the Oakland chapter of Service Employees International Union 1021 and a heavy equipment mechanic for the city.
The city and the union met with mediator David Weinberg all day Monday. Cuevas said the union and city negotiators would continue to meet with Weinberg in an effort to resolve issues about wages and working conditions that precipitated the strike. More than 3,000 city workers represented by SEIU 1021 and International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21 had been striking since Tuesday, disrupting services from libraries to Head Start Programs to senior centers and parking meter collection.
Some city residents who had gone without services that they had come to rely on were thrilled by the news.
“I just heard the senior centers will be open (Tuesday),” said Ping Cai, whose regular routine of taking tai chi and yoga classes at the North Oakland and Lincoln Recreation Centers had been disrupted for the past week. “We’re overjoyed.”
As striking workers picketed outside City Hall, waiting for word for when they could return to work, union officials were mum on any progress. Late in the afternoon Cuevas said the two sides were stuck on several issues but that they would negotiate into the evening as long as discussions were fruitful.
Earlier in the day, Lina Hernandez, a member of the SEIU bargaining team, called on city leaders to conduct the mediation talks in “good faith.” She said she was in it for the long haul.
“Be honest with yourselves about your finances,” Hernandez said. “Mayor Libby Schaaf goes on record saying that the city is in the best financial shape it’s ever been to get developers to build here, but then paints a picture of fire and brimstone that she says will be caused by giving us a daily wage. You can’t have it both ways.”
Schaaf was adamant that the city cannot afford what the union is asking, which is 4 percent across the board the first year, retroactive to July 1, 2017, when the last contract expired, and 4 percent the second year, effective July 1, 2018. A financial analysis released by Katano Kasaine, Oakland’s finance director, states that the union’s proposal would require job cuts of nearly 150 positions during those two years.
The city’s last offer included a 4 percent raise in the first year of the contract, another 1 percent raise guaranteed in the second year and another 1 percent raise contingent upon the city hitting certain revenue milestones. The union rejected that offer.
“We will continue to work with SEIU in good faith and remain responsible and fair to both our workers as well as our residents,” Schaaf said Saturday. “We cannot spend money we do not have, particularly as we know our pension costs are escalating at least 49 percent over the next five years.”
City Councilman Noel Gallo, who came to City Hall Monday afternoon to get an update on the negotiations, said he was going to reach out to his fellow council members to arrange another special session in an effort to end the standoff. Pointing to overflowing trash in Frank Ogawa Plaza that normally would be handled by Public Works crews, Gallo also said he had been receiving angry calls from his constituents in the Fruitvale district about uncollected garbage piling up in their neighborhood.
With building inspectors on strike, construction projects all over the city had been put on hold. One homeowner who has been building a granny unit on top of her garage complained that she had been unable to get an inspector for the last week and feared that when the strike finally ended there would be a major backlog.
She was not sympathetic to the union’s position.
“I wish they would fire them all,” she said.
Adam Jacobs, a private contractor in Oakland, said he and his crew have been working on a city public works project to improve handicapped accessibility at the Woodminster Amphitheater, and that strikers had attempted to block their access to the park.
“We’re about 50 percent done on the job, but I’ve unfortunately had to lay off some of my most vulnerable and lowest paid employees because I can’t move them to other jobs,” Jacobs said.
On Monday morning, a man arrived at City Hall to pay a $500 nuisance abatement fee, only to learn that the office was closed.
“I came all the way down here to make sure it got paid,” he said, showing an invoice from the city. “When are the offices going to reopen?”
That was something Maxine Visaya, an administrative assistant for the city’s rent adjustment program, also wanted to know. She admitted that the timing of the strike, on the eve of the holiday season, has been a financial sacrifice for city employees, who had not expected to be on the picket line for this long.
“I’m striking for better wages so I don’t have to worry about whether I can pay my bills,” said Visaya, as she fed her 2-year-old daughter. “I’m doing what I need to do, and I tried to be frugal in the last few months to prepare.”
Contact Tammerlin Drummond at 510-2086468.