Cost Savings Task Force Continues Progress Toward Budget Solutions

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Seeking $200 million in cost reductions to be redirected to employee compensation, the SEIU Local 1000 Cost Savings Task Force team met with the State again on December 17, 2020, to continue working toward that goal. Part of achieving that is for the team to expand their understanding of where and how the State spends its budget.

The December meeting featured subject matter experts from the Department of General Services (DGS) and the California Department of Technology (CDT) to discuss the State’s purchasing and contracting process. By leading the discussion around finding budget savings, the Task Force team achieves a deeper understanding of how that money is spent as they gain valuable insight into identifying savings even more effectively.

Aiding the process is our Contract Review sub-team, whose focus is to go deeper into the State’s outside contracts with private vendors for both goods and services, an additional opportunity for us to reach our $200 million goal.

Throughout the process, members have been providing potential cost savings ideas derived from their invaluable “on the ground” expertise in their workplaces. The Task Force encourages our members to continue sharing those ideas by emailing the team at costsavingstaskforce@seiu1000.org

Earlier this week, Governor Newsom presented his first-draft budget for FY 2021-22. Our Cost Savings Task Force will be closely reviewing this first-look at revenues and expenditures for the upcoming year as part of their ongoing efforts. In the meantime, we encourage members to be on the lookout for additional ways to get involved in supporting this important work.

About the Cost Savings Task Force

Rather than simply accepting the outcomes of the $54 billion state budget deficit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Local 1000 bargaining team fought for a better way to meet the State’s needs while protecting our hard-fought contractual rights.

The Cost Savings Task Force, which consists of eight Local 1000 member leaders, allows Local 1000 to leverage our power by working with the State to find $200 million in cost reductions to be redirected to employee compensation for July 2021. It’s a small amount of money in terms of the overall budget, but money that is vital to the working people we represent.

We secured this Task Force in last summer’s Side Letter negotiations to work collaboratively and creatively with the State to identify savings. The Task Force will meet regularly through March 2021, when a draft of the jointly presented recommendations will illustrate savings the State can achieve in the next fiscal year.