Council likely to OK contract

CITY HALL — The City Council tonight is expected to approve a one-year contract with the Glendale City Employees’ Assn. that doesn’t include a pay increase, nearly a month after the city’s largest municipal union voted down the contract.

That changed last week when the employee union narrowly approved the proposed contract with 67.9% of the vote, barely eclipsing the two-thirds majority required to ratify the contract, said President Craig Hinckley.

Of the group’s approximately 1,000 members, 810 voted.

“I think getting the contract in place is a good thing,” he said.

Employees have been working under the terms of the prior contract, which expired June 30. Once approved by the City Council, the new contract would take effect retroactively as of July 1.

While the contract doesn’t include a pay increase, the city agreed to pick up increased costs for employee medical insurance premiums, of which the city usually pays only half. The agreement also includes an increased uniform allowance and language allowing for the voluntary furloughs, or unpaid days off.

The same contract was rejected by the association last month when about 700 members voted, falling a few votes short of the majority needed.

At the time, some city officials said discord within the union caused by a proposed merger with the Local 18 chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers may have affected the vote.

The merger — pushed for by some union directors, — would have to go to the full membership for a vote, which has not yet been scheduled, Hinckley said.

In order to encourage a larger turnout the second time around, the voting period was expanded from one day to a week and electronic ballots were used, Hinckley said.

He noted that while the contract doesn’t have a pay increase, it is also absent of the mandatory furloughs that many local and state government employees currently face.

“That’s what’s beneficial,” he said. “We are not having to give anything up.”

Typically, contract agreements cover two to four years at a time, but both sides sought shorter lengths in light of economic uncertainty.

“We obviously have looked at a short-term contract because we don’t know where the economy is going,” Hinckley said.

Last month, the City Council approved a similar one-year contract with the Glendale Managers’ Assn., and earlier this year, the Glendale Firefighters’ Assn. agreed to forgo scheduled pay increases. City executives, who work at will, also committed to accepting no increases.

Mayor Frank Quintero said he was glad an agreement had finally been reached.

“There are no salary increases,” he said. “But we are in difficult economic times, so obviously the employees understood.”

Once official, the contract with general employees would leave police officers as the only group to get pay raises this year.

Council members put pressure on the Glendale Police Officers’ Assn., which was also in the middle of a four-year contract, but the union’s leadership refused, resulting in a 6% pay increase on July 1.

?MELANIE HICKEN covers City Hall. She may be reached at (818) 637-3235 or by e-mail at melanie.hicken@latimes.com.