Some California state workers could receive an extra 1% raise this year, if the budget allows
Ahead of Valentines Day, a group of state employees asked California leaders to show public servants some extra love.
Roughly 100 union members marched from SEIU Local 1000’s office on R Street to the nearby California Department of Human Resources’ building on Wednesday to deliver over 13,000 petitions, demanding the state grant a conditional 4% raise, instead of the normal 3% salary increase.
Carrying heart-shaped signs that read, “Love isn’t enough, we need 4%,” members of the Service Employees International Union handed Jeff Keil, a CalHR labor relations officer for units 1 and 4, several cardboard boxes containing signed petitions outside the department’s 16th Street office.
The 4% raise is conditional on “trigger language” that is included in SEIU Local 1000’s contract, which would give rank-and-file members an additional 1% salary increase on top of the 3% workers have received in previous years.
The condition? The Finance Department director will decide whether the state has enough extra money in the budget to grant the 1% increase. The Finance Director Joe Stephenshaw has until the May budget revision to determine whether the state can afford the raise.
In a statement, Finance spokesperson H.D. Palmer said the department hasn’t announced any changes to the budget since the governor submitted it to the Legislature in January. Palmer said a number of factors, including the fires in Los Angeles, will impact the expenditure and revenue sides of the budget. He added the Finance Department wouldn’t speculate as to what changes may be made at the May revision.
The Finance Department estimated the 3% raise will cost the state $360 million — 45% of which will come from the General Fund. The additional 1% would cost $120 million.
“That 1% will help people be able to sustain their families,” said Melvin Cain, a state employee with the Employment Development Department. “Costs aren’t going down any time soon.”
Cain, who is a union steward in training, said the increase is critical to financially support public employees and their families, while the cost to the state is a “drop in the bucket.”
Without the conditional raise, state employees covered by the contract will receive a 3% raise in July — on par with salary increases in 2023 and 2024. The language covers nine of the union’s 10 bargaining units (1, 3, 4, 11, 14, 15, 17, 20 and 21).
“When the state is hesitant to give more,” said Susan Rodriguez, the union’s chief negotiator, “our job is always to push above that.”
In order for SEIU Local 1000 negotiators to be comfortable accepting what the state was offering in the 2023 agreement, Rodriguez said the union proposed the “trigger language” to get members a raise in the event California was in a better financial position in 2025.
When Stephenshaw presented the governor’s full $322 billion budget proposal in January, he said the state had a “modest surplus” due to an improved stock market performance and savings from cutting 6,500 vacant positions.
“The opportunity to get the additional 1%, why would we leave it on the table?” union President Anica Walls said.
SEIU Local 1000 will begin negotiating with CalHR next year, and Walls said the union would prefer not to include “trigger language” in future contracts. She said that members want to know how much they can expect in salary increases.
But if it’s an opportunity between less and the possibility of more, she said, “I don’t think the bargaining team would make a different decision.”
State employees said Wednesday they need the additional salary increase to keep up with the ever-rising cost of living in California. Workers are struggling to afford everyday necessities, like gas and groceries, said Eric Moore, a Department of Motor Vehicles employee who has been a union member for 18 years.
“Every little bit helps,” he said.
This story was originally published February 13, 2025 at 9:00 AM.
