California state workers hold out for raises of up to 43% as contract talks fail with Newsom

California’s state scientists have been working for more than two years without a contract, and they’ll continue to do so after negotiations failed Wednesday in advance of a key legislative deadline.

The California Association of Professional Scientists has been pushing for raises of up to 43% for environmental scientists, citing what they say is a pay inequity dating to 2005.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration didn’t offer anything close to that in the most recent round of bargaining, said David Rist, the union’s bargaining chairman.

“We’re a bit surprised, and we’re disappointed,” Rist said Thursday. “Scientists are committed to ensuring that we’re able to take on these environmental and public health threats that we’re all faced with, and we need support. We need partnership.”

The union’s bargaining team had been working to try to reach an agreement in time for the Legislature to approve it before ending its session on Aug. 31.

The union represents about 3,800 rank-and-file state employees following a bout of recent hiring. About 65% of them fall into the environmental scientist category, Rist said.

Other state unions representing engineers, maintenance workers, attorneys and psychiatric technicians have secured general raises of no more than 3% in the last two months, with special raises of up to about 16% over three years for groups with demonstrated recruitment and retention problems.

State scientists earn an average of about $84,000 per year, according to the latest salary survey from the state Human Resources Department. The group was slightly underpaid compared to peers in local and federal government and had a vacancy rate of about 15%, according to the survey.

The Newsom administration’s final offer on scientists’ pay was an initial 4% special salary adjustment that would have covered 87% of the union’s rank-and-file employees, plus 2% for everybody in year two and 2% more in year three, Rist said.

The union has been pushing for the kind of double-digit wage increases for environmental scientists that a group of engineers received in 2005. The scientists and the engineers perform very similar work, but the scientists didn’t get the same pay bump.

The union, which also represents supervisors, sued on behalf of scientists in supervisory roles who didn’t get the raise, saying the engineers’ deal violated California’s “like pay for like work” provisions. The supervisory scientists got the raises, worth 18% to 43% of their pay, in 2014 following a lengthy legal battle.

But the rank-and-file didn’t, spurring the union to keep fighting.

When a state contract expires, its terms remain in effect but employees typically don’t receive new raises. However, the scientists’ union has negotiated a number of side agreements, including agreements that reduced their pay along with all other state employees as the pandemic arrived in 2020 and restored their pay in 2021 when there was a budget surplus.

Rist said the union and the administration have continued to make progress on a contract agreement, but remain far apart on pay.

The only other state union that hadn’t yet emerged from this summer’s negotiations with a contract by noon Thursday was Cal Fire Local 2881. The union’s president, Tim Edwards, said the union was still in talks.

This story was originally published August 25, 2022 at 12:33 PM.