Solano settles ... for nothing less than victory
If there’s one story that deserves top billing for showing how to snatch victory from the jaws of despair, it’s the story of Solano County, which the NewsWire has been covering since October, when county workers held a mock funeral rally for their contract as it expired. Then management added injury to insult by unilaterally axing workers’ (but not their own) health care benefits right before the winter holidays, right about the time that fruitless months of bargaining reached a total impasse.
As May turned into June, however, our members not only scored big at the bargaining table, but shifted the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors by unseating an unfriendly incumbent in the June 3 primary and giving a second incumbent a tough showdown to fight in November. In other words, by voting with our feet, we walked all over them.
“Greater strength through greater numbers” was always the promise of the reorganization that created our Local 1021, and perhaps nowhere else has that promise borne more fruit. Only a hundred-plus members took part in the October funeral rally — but nearly 1,200 members (half the bargaining unit) showed up for an April 22 march through downtown Fairfield. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my 40 years in county government,” Board of Supes candidate Skip Thomson told the crowd filling the square in front of the county admin building.
Energized by the rally and fed up with months of impasse, members engaged their families, friends and communities to vote in the June 3 statewide primary and began tilting the balance toward a more worker-friendly Board of Supervisors. District 2 candidate Linda Seifert won her seat outright, replacing one of the supervisors who had most opposed us. In District 5, Thomson easily beat his opponent and will face the incumbent in the fall general election.
Power-play bargaining
Apparently the rumor’s true that Solano County management can count, because when they counted all the 1021 members attending the April 22 rally and mobilizing voters, they saw how things were adding up and moved to settle. After the health care cuts before Christmas, the long list of contract improvements includes better medical, dental, and vision care, plus a coke of COLAs: 3 percent upon ratification, plus Consumer Price Index-based raises of 3-5 percent in each of the contract’s three years.
The supes are scheduled to vote on the tentative agreement on June 24, and the bargaining team is recommending ratification.
Members also held their ground on alternative work schedules, one of the main sticking points behind the impasse. The county may now institute or modify alternative work schedules, but only after a meet-and-confer with the union and approval of the CAO and Board of Supervisors, which, like we said, just became a little more worker-friendly.
Two takeaways
There are two lessons we can take away from Solano. For those who wonder why we engage so heavily in political action, this is it; this is the reason: it’s the politicians — the supervisors and city council members and school board directors — who sign our contracts and hire the management that sits across from us at the table. (Just look at Oakland, where a council member we opposed is now making life at the table harder than ever for all city unions.)
No less important is to see what member engagement on a massive scale can do: engage the community we serve to improve life for everyone in the region.