Union Targeting City Management

Katy Grimes: With Wisconsin’s Governor and Republican legislators trying to repeal the state’s collective bargaining law for public-employee unions, as well as requiring state workers to pay some of their pension costs, Sacramento’s former head of labor relations, Dee Contreras, is now trying to organize a labor union of city managers and other highly-compensated administrative workers.

The practice of former city managers and upper management city executives crossing over to the other side of the negotiating table appears to be growing, despite the strong push back by voters and private sector.

Contreras retired in December right before her department was consolidated into the city’s human resources department.

Targeting upper management, assistant city managers, investigators, administrative analysts and staff aides, as well as the city attorney, a list of the jobs that Contreras plans on including in the new union are available here.

This latest attempt to unionize 677 city management leaves precious few in the city to look after the interests of the poor, hapless taxpayers who will have to pay the extra and excessive costs when the managers and administrators are also unionized.

Contreras also announced that she will serve as the staffer for the Sacramento City Exempt Employees Association, during the campaign to unionize top managers and administrative staff reported the Sacramento Press.

And it was reported that while she represented the city as Labor Relations director, Contreras said that she worked for unions in the past, including the Service Employees International Union.

My CalWatchdog colleague John Seiler wrote about the Wisconsin union protests, and said, “Collective bargaining is a key issue because it gives unions immense clout in negotiating with state and local governments. Unions and government employees insist that it is their right to organize and present a united front to the government. The catch, though, is that they are the government. Collective bargaining in the private sector means that labor sits one side of the table and management, such as at GM or Ford, sits on the other side. That’s different from government, where the unions sit on the labor side of the table — but also, by electing pliant politicians to power in state houses, city councils and school boards, sits on the management side.”

Contreras may find protestors soon objecting to her ridiculous attempt to unionize management – even Californians are growing weary of union peddling and the growing disparity between government pay, benefits and unsustainable pensions.

FEB. 19, 2011