A major Oakland municipal union has called a one-day strike for next week if contract talks with the city fail to yield progress.
At a rally and news conference Tuesday, leadership of IFPTE Local 21 said its members would take to the picket lines for an unfair labor practices strike on Nov. 5 if the two sides can’t reach a fair contract agreement by then.
“A fair contract means better staffing, right?” said IFPTE Local 21 vice president Julian Ware while addressing the media and union members from the steps of Oakland’s Main Library.
“A fair contract means AI guardrails protecting the jobs that we have giving our residents the best services that they deserve,” Ware said. “Computers don’t fix everything, people do.”
Ware said that Oakland has a workforce vacancy rate of about 20%, which has led to an “unacceptable” short staffing situation that impacts the city’s ability to deliver services, including road paving, tree trimming, illegal dumping cleanup and the like.
The two sides have been in contract talks for six or seven months, Ware said, and the union has been doing “everything that we need to do,” while the city “has not been doing what they’re supposed to do.”
‘We’ve been getting no response’
Keith Brown of the Alameda Labor Council was also on hand Tuesday to voice his organization’s support for IFPTE members, as was SEIU Local 1021 shop steward Donte Hollowell.
Hollowell said his union is in the same situation as IFPTE is with its contract talks.
“We’ve been in bargaining since March and we’ve been getting no response,” he said.
IFPTE 21 represents more than 1,000 city employees across several departments, including administrators, attorneys, engineers, architects, supervisors and managers.
Last week, the union announced that its members overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike if it can’t reach an agreement with the city.
The roughly 2,000 members of SEIU Local 1021 have also voted to authorize a strike if its negotiations with the city don’t result in an agreement. Local 1021 represents pothole repair crews, illegal dumping collection teams, park attendants, police and fire dispatchers and librarians, among other workers.
Oakland has been in contract negotiations with all seven of its union-represented worker groups since early spring and on Tuesday announced a tentative five-year agreement with its firefighter union that includes a 16% wage increase over the life of the contract.
In September, the Oakland City Council approved a 14% wage hike over five years for the city’s police union and has also reached an agreement with the Police Department’s management group.
“The city is continuing to bargain in good faith, with multi-year wage increases on the table, and with the expectation of reaching agreements” with the remaining four unions, according to a news release posted on the city’s website.
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