Message from Our Bargaining Chair
Updated 11:00 a.m., March 27
To our Unit 21 Colleagues,
As your Unit 21 elected bargaining team, we are proud of the results of this ratification process. Our members saw the importance of securing our contract; 97 percent of members voted and they ratified the contract by 94 percent.
The reason for the overwhelming approval is clear — this is a good contract in bad times and with the support of 95,000 SEIU Local 1000 members and a professional staff of negotiators, researchers, attorneys and political staff we won:
- Unprecedented layoff protections;
- Health insurance contributions frozen at roughly 2008 levels through 2010;
- Protection from the state’s demand to take away our FLSA exempt status and educational leave;
- Language that allows us to address the visiting educator issue from multiple fronts, including recruitment and retention and contracting out provisions that we share with the rest of the SEIU Local 1000 – represented workers.
We worked hard to get this contract and could not have done it without your support and activities. We had a higher percentage of members involved in the ratification process than at any time in our union’s history. Let’s work together and make it even better next time.
The only way we can do that, is by staying together as Unit 21, SEIU Local 1000. It’s time to take a stand. We don’t want to throw away what we just achieved.
Our next step — the only logical step — is to vote for Unit 21, SEIU Local 1000 once we receive our ballot in the mail.
Terry Lawhead
Unit 21 Chair
Phone: (916) 607-4101
