6/4/09
A group of about 30 city of Española employees crowded the City Council chambers to challenge councilors to make good on the pro-labor campaign promises they made while running for their seats.
“You were all elected on pro-labor tickets,” Union President Joaquin Maestas told the Council at its May 26 meeting.
At issue are union allegations that the city left the union out of its budget process and unilaterally changed employees’ working conditions.
“This local has been left out of the budget process for this city,” union representative Sam Chavez said. “It unilaterally changed working conditions when it changed the process for donating leave. It’s contracting out work. The question here is where this Council is pro-labor or not?”
All but three councilors met Chavez and Maestas’ speeches with blank stares. Others emphasized their support for the union, but said little about the outsourcing or leave policy.
“I am pro-labor,” District 1 Councilor Danielle Duran said. “I have pushed in the past to get you budget documents. But as you know, management is short-handed. I would encourage management to deal with the union on this issue.”
In past years, the union has received draft copies of the city’s budget for the following fiscal year early in the budget process, Maestas said. This year, however, it has not received that information, though Acting City Manager Veronica Albin and department heads have been developing the 2010 fiscal year budget for months now, and the Council agreed to submit a preliminary budget to the state Finance Administration Department Monday.
About the outsourcing, Duran said though the Council has discussed the idea, it has not yet made a decision.
District 1 Councilor Dennis Tim Salazar echoed Duran’s comments, and Mayor Pro Tem Alice Lucero said only that if the city does outsource payroll, it should consider local companies among other vendors.
But correspondence shows city officials started making arrangements for the outsourcing weeks ago.
Finance Manager Andrew Perkins wrote the Rochester, N.Y.-based company Paychex that its quote would “best suit (the city’s) needs.”
“Please coordinate with me the transition to Paychex as a vendor of payroll services,” Perkins wrote Paychex employee Kelli Jones.
Perkins said he requested quotes from three payroll companies, but received only one, for about $18,000, from Paychex.
Financial specialist Trudy Gallegos, who is in charge of the city’s accounts payable and payroll, said Perkins has told her she would continue working the same amount of hours, but would be assigned additional duties within the Finance Department. Perkins said the Finance Department needed an additional employee, but found it would be cheaper to outsource payroll and reassign Gallegos than to make a new hire.
But the union sees as a threat that the city is outsourcing services rather than assigning them to staff.
“Why would we contract services when we can do them in-house?” Maestas asked. “Especially during these economic times, when people are worrying about their jobs.”
According to Chavez, who also spoke for the group at the meeting, the union filed a complaint with the state Public Labor Relations Board May 18 alleging that the city changed working conditions without bargaining with the union.
If the Board determines the union’s complaint has merit, it may schedule a hearing with union and city representatives. The city has until later this week to file a response with the Board.
Albin said the city has started drafting a response, but provided no further details.
Maestas said he discovered the city’s sick leave policy had changed when he took two weeks off to recover from a hospitalization due to congestive heart failure.
The city’s leave policy includes a provision allowing other employees to donate sick leave to coworkers during a prolonged absence due to illness. But when other employees tried to donate to Maestas, supervisors denied their request, citing a memo from Albin re-interpreting that policy, he said.
Maestas argued that re-interpretation constitutes a change in employee working conditions, which the city must bargain with the union. But the city did not even notify the union of the change, he said.
“To date — and I am the president of the union — I have not even seen this memo,” Maestas told the Council.
Albin argued that the city must bargain to change the rules, but can change at its discretion how the rules are applied.
“Nothing has been changed,” she told the Council. “The intent of the policies remains intact. There has only been a change of interpretation in how those rules are applied.”