City Workers Propose Cost Saving Measures for City

AFSCME 3090 President Alice Goff and District Council 36 Executive Director Cheryl Parisi joined other city union leaders and rank and file members from the Coalition of LA City Unions for a press conference on the steps of City Hall on April 28 to announce potential cost savings and revenue generating mechanisms that would help Los Angeles solve its estimated $400 million budget deficit without cutting city services or jobs.

The efforts by city workers and unions to generate cost savings for the City was a continuation of the innovative mutual gains bargaining process that resulted in last year’s successful agreement between the City and the six unions collectively representing 22,000 City workers. In contrast to adversarial bargaining approaches, "mutual gains" bargaining takes a problem solving approach towards the issues of both parties. This process enabled the city workers to receive long over-due and well deserved pay increases while providing significant cost saving for Los Angeles.

Following the press conference, the group attended the start of budget hearings of which there will be a series before a recommendation is made to the full City Council. “Last year, Mayor Villaraigosa invited us to bargain under the mutual gains process, and set forth a new path for labor management relations in the City,” said Parisi who also chairs the Coalition of LA City Unions. “We are dedicated to being part of the solution. The Coalition Unions called on our members working on the front lines of City services to come up with ideas to help the City maintain services in these tough budget times.”

The some of the cost saving ideas announced by the Coalition include expanding the City’s pilot program for reducing the cost of Workers’ Compensation, continue with civilianization of the Police Department, making fee changes in the City’s library system for computer use and entertainment DVDs, expand public awareness campaign on the need to recycle thereby reducing the cost of disposal in landfills while helping the environment, and purchase “bare bones” helicopter and retrofit in-house.

These were but a few of the many suggestions received from our members. The Coalition of City Unions also invited the public to contribute their ideas to the process at their website www.SaveCityServices.com.