County Negotiations Update: June 13, 2023

Dear OCEA member,

The OCEA negotiations team met with the County on Monday, June 12, for a special Monday negotiations session. You can read our last recap here.

On Monday, our team started the day cautiously optimistic. The County asked for an additional meeting and there are only a few items for each side left on the table for discussion. We hoped for a productive day with multiple exchanges and robust dialogue. Instead of a productive day we were met with disappointment when the County only made a single incremental move on wages!

After only one exchange from both sides the County lead negotiator informed our team that the County was done for the day unless we reduced our wage proposal further! The OCEA team - through our lead negotiator OCEA General Manager Charles Barfield - expressed our irritation at the attempt to bully our team. It is important to note that the County's negotiator is given direction by the CEO and other high ranking County executives, who also make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors.

Negotiations is always a roller coaster, and this cycle is no different. While Monday felt like a missed opportunity to make significant progress toward our final big topics - especially wage increases - it’s worth noting that the OCEA team has fought for several MOU improvements thus far and has beaten back numerous concessionary proposals from the County. While nothing is final until everything is final, our team has been making steady, meaningful progress for OCEA members in each of our recent negotiation sessions. You can read every negotiations recap here.

What comes next? We are scheduled to meet with the County again on Wednesday, June 14, for what will be our tenth negotiations session. We continue to make it clear that OCEA members need meaningful raises that match or exceed the market!  On Thursday our OCEA Stewards will meet and our entire team will review the upcoming calendar and discuss how we can stand together to secure a fair MOU. To find out more about how to become an OCEA workplace leader go to ocea.org/getinvolved.

Stay tuned for our next update on June 15.

In Solidarity,

Team OCEA

Publication Date: June 13, 2023