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Santa Clara County Employee Strike Could Happen Friday

Some 12,000 9-1-1 dispatchers, social workers, health and
hospital workers, nurses, park workers, janitors, clerks and roads and
maintenance workers — among others — represented by Service Employees
International Union Local 521 plan to go on strike Friday unless the Santa
Clara Board of Supervisors intervenes, the union said in a statement Sunday.

“The county is proposing eliminating the wage increase
for June 2020 that they included in their ‘last, best and final’ offer of
2019,” said Janet Diaz, a patient services clerk at Valley Medical Center,
in Sunday’s statement. “This is not only illegal, but a deliberate attack
on the livelihoods of workers who not only serve the public, but who are
residents of this county.

“The Board of Supervisors must intervene to avoid a
countywide strike set for this week,” Diaz said.

The supervisors are set to meet Monday, at 2 p.m. for open
session and public comment, with closed session to follow.

This newest strike announcement comes nine months after the
last contract covering “frontline” employees – those who routinely
work directly with the public – expired July 17. The possible strike Friday
would come after a 10-day strike in October, which was followed by voluntary
mediation in November. In August, 97 percent of Local 521’s members voted to
authorize October’s unfair labor practices strike; that vote also serves as authorization
for this Friday’s strike, if it happens, a union spokesman said Sunday night

Key issues, Local 521 leaders said, are short staffing and turnover
resulting from low pay.

Until recently, it appeared that agreement was close but now
the county is “moving backwards” by insisting on a new offer with
roughly $110 million less in raises than what had been offered by the county in
its contract offer of Oct. 15. “By eliminating a previously-offered raise
of 3 percent in June 2020, the new proposal would cause the essential frontline
workers — already low paid – to fall even further behind others employed by the
county,” Sunday’s release said.

Calls to Santa Clara County public information office were
not immediately returned Sunday night.


Source: NBC Bay Area

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