County Employees Offered at Least 94% Less Than Grocery Workers; After Weeks Pondering Union’s Proposal to Honor the Juneteenth Holiday, County Still Has NO Position!

After weeks of negotiations for a successor Fringe Benefit Memorandum of Understanding, the County refused to appropriately recognize our front line sacrifices during the pandemic and instead proposed that we forgo our contractual right to protect health coverage for County employees who participate in the Kaiser and Cigna medical plans in exchange for as little as 21¢/hour in Hazard Bonus, when in Feb. 2021 the Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance requiring $5/hour 'hero pay' for grocery workers.

“This Bonus does not meaningfully address the hard work of doctors, nurses, mental health workers, first responders, and countless other County employees who kept the County running and took care of residents during the pandemic,” said Blaine Meek, Chair of the Coalition of County Unions. “The economy is booming, the County of L.A. has more than $1 Billion in reserves, and the Federal government has allocated billions in COVID relief funding. We simply cannot understand why the Board of Supervisors would consider their own employees’ work taking care of County residents to be worth so much less than grocery workers.”

The County of Los Angeles has received nearly $2 billion in funding from the Federal government for relief to support front line heroes and other impacts from the pandemic. Further, economists at UCLA’s Anderson Quarterly Forecast are predicting that California’s economy is poised for a ‘euphoric’ rebound. “In the nation and in California, “we are about to have one of the best years of economic growth that we’ve had since World War II,” said Leo Feler, the UCLA Anderson Forecast’s senior economist. “We’re looking at a boom time for the U.S. economy.”

On June 17, 2021, President Biden signed legislation commemorated the end of slavery by making Juneteenth a Federal holiday. On June 21, 2021, the CCU simply proposed that the parties negotiate a specific date for Juneteenth as a County holiday – the County has not responded to date.

“When Congress and the President took a matter of days to recognize this as a Federal holiday, why is the County still pondering our proposal after three weeks, a week after our contract expired?” asked Jonathan Byrd, 2nd Vice President and Chief Steward, AFSCME Local 685.