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Menlo Park city officials on Monday announced a tentative agreement with city workers that includes a 3 percent raise and improved benefits.

The deal with Service Employees International Union Local 521 includes a 3 percent raise in base salaries, effective as of the next pay period following ratification by the City Council.

The tentative agreement also includes the addition of city-funded vision insurance and a 3 percent increase — plus $500 a year — in city contributions to a fund that allows employees to use pretax dollars toward the purchase of health insurance.

The contract extends through June 30, 2017, and covers 148 employees.

The contract also includes a three-month time limit for the city and the union to negotiate changes in salary ranges for individual employee job classifications after the release of a study expected in early 2016. If an agreement cannot be reached in three months, all employees will get an across the board 2 percent raise in July 2016.

The tentative agreement is subject to approval by both the union and the City Council. The council is scheduled to vote on it at its Nov. 10 meeting, which starts at 7 p.m.

Click here to see the staff report and tentative agreement. It’s a PDF document and may load slowly.

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14 Comments

  2. This is good news. Workers deserve a bump for all the work they do. There are many who work behind the doors to the city buildings and provide good programs for our kids, provide answers to our questions and work hard to keep Menlo park a nice place to live and work.

  3. What has the rate of inflation been the last three years? There’s a reason Social Security won’t be giving a COLA increase this year.

  4. Go to the government site on consumer price index:

    http://www.bls.gov/cpi/

    For the last 12 months, it’s been zero. But Menlo Voter knew this just from intuition based on no COLA for social security (very rare that no COLA is given).

    Just another example of weak elected officials letting government employees ratchet more and more unwarranted concessions.

  5. The city doesn’t seem to expect much in terms of employee co-pays for benefits. That is one reason healthcare costs keep increasing. It used to be that public employees got nice benefits because their pay was below the private sector. That is no longer the case. The combination of pay and benefits for public sector is now superior to many in the private sector. The city is negotiating poorly on behalf of us taxpayers.
    The city isn’t requiring commercial enterprises to pay their fair share.

  7. Too bad this doesn’t include all the contract workers who were never able to become permanent employees. Many have been there over 10 years as contract only, no raise for 5 years, just so the city doesn’t have to offer benefits. Outrageous!

  8. “after the release of a study expected in early 2016.”

    There is no language in the Staff Report or the Tentative Agreement regarding the terms/scope of the cited study.

  13. Thanks.

    Here is what the study calls for:
    “The classification and compensation study is primarily designed to focus on internal and external equity of both the structure by which employees are compensated as well as the way positions relate and compare to one another across the organization. Internal equity relates to the fairness of an organization’s compensation practices among its current employees. Specifically, by reviewing the skills, capabilities, and duties of each position, it can be determined whether similar positions are being compensated in a similar manner within the organization. The classification component of this study is aimed at resolving any inconsistencies related to job requirements and providing some clarity to the plan in place. External equity deals with the differences between how an organization’s classifications are valued and what compensation is available in the market place for the same skills, capabilities, and duties.”

    The risk is that the study will ONLY look at other government agencies and not at the local private sector market place.

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