Cover Story
Clifford Pham
Palo Alto SEIU members march in front of City Hall in a 2009 protest of proposed benefit cuts.
Palo Alto’s labor unions struggle to remain relevant during tough budget times by Gennady Sheyner
P
alo Alto and Wisconsin are thousands of miles apart — geographically and politically — but one wouldn’t guess that by talking to the local labor leaders. The high-tech hub and the cheese-loving state have seen their financial fortunes fall over the past three years. Each has responded by zeroing in on labor unions, though in drastically different ways. Wisconsin made national headlines earlier this year when its Republican legislators passed a law curtailing the collectivebargaining rights of state employees. In Palo Alto, the cost-cutting effort has been far less dramatic but, to union members, no less real. Since 2009, the City
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Council and City Manager James Keene have made a commitment to extract concessions from each labor union, including permanent “structural” changes to pension and health care benefits. The council also voted in July to place a measure on the ballot that would eliminate binding arbitration for disputes between the city and its publicsafety unions. These efforts have prompted some labor leaders to cry foul and compare the city’s reform efforts to Wisconsin’s. The council’s drive to slash benefits has made many City Hall employees unhappy, though, to paraphrase Leo Tolstoy, each labor group has been unhappy in its own way. The city’s largest union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU),
Local 521, initially rallied against the reforms but has been largely silent since the city imposed the new conditions on its roughly 630 members in October 2009. Last year, the union voted to extend a contract that includes a two-tiered pension plan (with newly hired employees subject to a less generous formula) and a cost-sharing arrangement for medical expenses — moves that the union had fiercely resisted in 2009. The management-and-professionals group — the only major labor group that’s not a union — began giving serious thought to becoming one. Last year, the group briefly flirted with joining the Teamsters. Meanwhile, two subgroups of
employees splintered off to become their own, more specialized unions. The Palo Alto Police Managers Association, which represents police captains and lieutenants, was born in fall 2009. The Utilities Managers Professionals Association of Palo Alto, which includes 45 members of the Utilities Department, officially sprung into existence in June. Both small unions were formed out of general frustration that their particular concerns aren’t being met, members said. Public-safety unions have also been grumbling. Two years ago, Palo Alto’s largest police union, the Palo Alto Police Officers Association, offered to forego its members’ negotiated raises to help the city