After a tumultuous year of political and economic turbulence, SEIU Local 1000’s work on the State Budget made sure that the State remains accountable to the workers who kept California moving through the worst of the pandemic.
After a tumultuous year of political and economic turbulence, SEIU Local 1000’s work on the State Budget made sure that the State remains accountable to the workers who kept California moving through the worst of the pandemic.
Our Cost Savings Task Force (CSTF) met with the State to work towards identifying $200 million in budget reductions, which meant Local 1000-represented employees received their expected 2% general salary increase scheduled for 2021 and eliminated the 9.23% PLP-based pay cut. The Task Force ensured that our members have the ability to leverage our power in this collaboration to influence the State to implement our recommendations.
And our work with the State didn’t stop there. We built political power for our union by leveraging the legislative and electoral processes to protect and enhance the collective bargaining agreement. Through our outreach to the State, we continued to fight to secure funding to expand the workforce and strengthen our communities, defended against attempts to contract away the jobs of state workers, and fought off attempts to reduce state worker rights/protections.
Our Cost Savings Task Force work was helped by two major victories that ensured the State would be held responsible to ensure the safety and security of workers during the last year. The union supported the passage of SB 270, which imposes penalties on agencies that don’t provide the union with new employee information, and AB 3088, which extended the eviction moratorium during the height of the pandemic.
As we look to the coming year, our 2022 Legislative focus will help SEIU Local 1000 members by securing funding to create more state positions, strengthen state telework policies, and secure funding to compensate state employees as essential workers while protecting our workforce from contracting out. As we continue to work with the State on these important issues, we will also be able to test new relational organizing technologies to ensure that all represented employees have their voices heard.