Pasadena City Workers Will Demand “Equal Treatment” at Rally on Monday

[Updated] In what they describe as an escalating labor dispute, Pasadena City workers represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 858 said late last week that they plan to rally at Pasadena City Hall before the City Council meeting tonight to demand better pay.

Last Friday morning, a union representative claimed that 260 out 300 union members working for the City of Pasadena stayed home from their jobs in a “spontaneous” action.

A city spokesman said that a unusually high number of City employees did not report to work Friday.

Pasadena Public Information Officer William Boyer, when asked about the absences, said, “I’ve heard that it was more than 50.”

Then, in early afternoon Friday, an addendum was added to Monday night’s Council meeting: a closed door conference with AFSCME labor negotiators.

Wax said the workers’ sick-out action was not a planned union activity: “we didn’t authorize it,” he said.

A statement announcing the rally said “these front line service workers, many of whom have been serving the City for two and three decades, have been singled out by management and asked to accept inferior pay and benefits compared with most other City employees.”

“These workers have always been the ones to step up and sacrifice when budget times were tough,” says AFSCME Local 858 representative Lee Wax. “But it is not okay that Management gives themselves raises and negotiates fair deals with everyone else but them. All they are asking for is an honest discussion at the bargaining table, and equal treatment in the workforce.”

“In our last contract the city offered us a 25 cent raise, 25 cent raise, yes, you’re hearing me correctly,” said Wax, “so we did an informational picket and we got another dollar and a half, we got less than 2 percent. The city is crying ‘broke,’ they say they can’t afford to give us a 3 percent raise.”

The local claims their members are paid significantly less than other City workers.

Wax added, “Now we did a study based on the city’s demographics, and we found out that there’s a disparity in the pay of groups in the lower paying classes, like the rank and file. Our international (union) did this survey and I’m going to bring it up Monday night again at city council because the city has hired an outside consultant to determine what to do with this information.

“Now what to do is to correct it,” Wax continued. “They didn’t need to call in a consultant. If their own information says that people grouped in these classes are paid at a lower rate than white and Asian,then you don’t need a consultant to verify it, it’s your own information. So that’s where we are.”

Wax emphasized, “We think that’s the reason why we get treated so poorly when it comes to our contracts. “These workers have always been the ones to step up and sacrifice when budget times were tough,”but it is not okay that management gives themselves raises and negotiates fair deals with everyone else but them. All they are asking for is an honest discussion at the bargaining table, and equal treatment in the workforce.”

According to Steven Koffroth, AFSCME Local 858 representative, the union has been in negotiation with the City of Pasadena for over a year.

“The contract that we had prior to this one was a one-year contract which was also the result of a difficult two-year negotiation back in 2014,” Koffroth said. “We got a four percent raise in 2014, and since then we have had two one-year contracts with one percent raises. It’s offensive to our members, since supervisors just got a three percent raise and police officers got more than a ten percent raise. We know that there is more available from the city, and they are just not offering it to us.”