Today I Was Proud to be Union

[RandySF]

I work for a city in the East San Francisco Bay area and, like other municipalities around the country, we are experiencing our share of hard times. The city manager is trying to close a nasty budget deficit and faces some tough choices as to how to do it. He already cut bodies at the beginning of the fiscal year and desperately does not want to do it again. He went to the unions and asked us to come up with a given amount of savings from each bargaining unit.

Today we met for about an hour and hashed together a plan that involves everyone giving back a little bit of deferred comp. and agreeing to a set of furloughs. I admit that these concessions are not as harsh as in other workplaces around the country, but I was proud that we decided to sacrifice together instead of allowing one or more of us to be let go.

[Postman]

1. Sticking together is the definition of Union.

In good times and bad.

[RandySF]

2. I also need to give credit to the City Manager

He reached to us right away and left it to us to figure it out.

[Betsy Ross]

3. Alameda just rejected, for the moment,

outsourcing all city services. We dodged that bullet, but the gun in still loaded.

[RandySF]

4. Outsourcing does not save enough

I did a study on outsourcing one of our services. The savings were minimal and we would lose quality control and flexibility.

[navarth]

5. recommend