A California state worker union held out for better pay. Here’s what’s in its new contract
After holding out for a little more than two-plus years for better wage increases, a union representing roughly 4,000 scientists announced Friday they had reached a tentative contract agreement with the state of California.
The work of these scientists, members of the California Association of Professional Scientists, affects the lives of Californians daily in areas such as water safety, toxic cleanup and pest control. They had wanted raises of 43%, citing pay inequities dating to 2005.
What they will vote on falls well short of that.
The tentative contract provides for annual raises of 2% in July 2023 and July 2024, however, a little more than 80% of the scientists also would receive a salary adjustment that, along with the yearly wage increases, will boost their pay by 8% or more over the 2.5-year contract term..
Employees in that 80%-plus group work in job classifications that have been deemed underpaid, union officials said.
Those in the veterinarian and plant science classifications, for instance, would get 10% salary adjustments retroactive to Nov. 1, 2022. Microbiologists, staff toxicologists, chemists, and scientists and researchers in more than a dozen other roles would see retroactive adjustments of 4%, and the remaining employees in the bargaining unit would bank a retroactive pay bump of 2.5%.
The union will begin voting on the deal Wednesday and will announce results by Feb. 1, said lead union negotiator Jacqueline Tkac. She said she doesn’t know how the vote will go since members have longstanding grievances about how they are paid but that new provisions in the deal provide a path to resolving these old disputes.
Correcting ‘pay inequities’
The union has argued its environmental scientists are grossly underpaid when compared with state engineers who do much of the same work but have benefited from larger pay increases. The scientists also have condemned leaders at the California Department of Human Resources for including management and supervisor pay when calculating the average pay of workers in their unit.
“For many years, we have challenged the method and the conclusions that the state has come to that we believe inaccurately look at our bargaining unit and its pay inequities,” Tkac said. “If we can’t agree on the data that’s being used to determine what they believe is an appropriate salary range for our classifications in our union, then it’s difficult really to agree on anything else.“
The part that grates most for scientists is that their supervisors garnered hefty pay increases of 18% to 43% in 2014 after the union waged a court battle on their behalf, arguing that the state of California had violated its own “like pay for like work” when it came to the engineers’ raises. While the supervisors walked away with wage gains, the rank-and-file did not.
Finally, though, there may be a way to resolve these fundamental differences, Tkac said, with new labor-management committees that will study which data should be considered when calculating average salaries. Methodology is critical to scientists, Tkac said, and there’s frustration that the agency overseeing pay equity and parity hasn’t seen how data collection is affecting outcomes in this matter.
“CalHR is the department that exists in part to ensure that positions that do comparable duties with one another are similarly compensated,” Tkac said, “and they’ve had years to complete their own internal research and on top of what we’ve already presented at the table, and frankly, I find it rather disappointing that they need even more time to complete additional studies and have these discussions with us when it’s really their job to ensure equity exists.”
CalHR’s Camille Travis, deputy director of communications, said the agency does not comment on tentative agreements.
Gender equity, state disability insurance also key
Tkac said she considers the joint-labor management committees a key accomplishment from the negotiation and that they will also study issues such as gender equity in pay and whether wages for state scientists are competitive locally in a state where the cost of living varies greatly between regions.
If approved, the tentative deal would — for the first time ever — pay a monthly $250 differential to scientists in the unit who work in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, Santa Clara and San Francisco.
The tentative deal also would give members something that they had long requested, access to state disability insurance, and there are new pay differentials — 2% or 3% of base pay — for industrial hygienists in the Department of Industrial Relations who earn critical certifications.
“If the (tentative) offer is good enough, our members will take it,” Tkac said, “and if it’s not, then they will refuse it. We believe that there’s a lot of work left to do with the state when it comes to addressing our pay equity issues.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2022 at 6:06 PM.
CORRECTION: A Dec. 26 story about a tentative labor agreement between the state of California and the California Association of Professional Scientists, published on Page 4A, incorrectly stated that one contract provision already applied. If ratified, the tentative deal would institute monthly differential pay for scientists working in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, Santa Clara and San Francisco counties. They would receive $250 a month.
