The OCAA board is pleased to announce the tentative agreement to settle our legal actions against the county.
Fellow OCAA members,
The OCAA board is pleased to announce the tentative agreement to settle our legal actions against the county and for a new MOU has been finalized and put into writing. The settlement agreement and MOU will be available on our website, www.ocaa.net as soon as we receive the final version, which we hope will be tomorrow. When it is posted, click on CONTRACTS and there will be three documents specifically related to the new agreement. Please do not print out the documents at work.
A vote on this agreement and contract is scheduled for Monday, May 4, at 5:00, in the Hall of Administration (Building 10) in the Board of Supervisors meeting room (where last couple votes have taken place). There will be a brief presentation by the OCAA board that will primarily focus on the changes to the agreement that have occurred since the roadshows (which will be explained in detail below). If you know how you are going to vote you can just show up and vote without listening to the presentation. But there will also be an opportunity to ask questions before voting. Also, if you are unable to attend Monday night, you will be permitted to vote in person at the OCAA office (600 West Santa Ana Blvd, Suite 114F, Santa Ana) on Tuesday May 5 and Wednesday May 6 between 10am and 4pm.
If we vote to accept the agreement, the BOS will vote to approve the deal at its May 12 meeting. We expect that all of us will receive the money owed us from the settlement as soon as the appeals are dismissed on both cases. We will request the appeals be dismissed immediately after the BOS votes to ratify the deal. We expect it will take 2-3 weeks for the appeals to be dismissed.
There have been a couple changes in the agreement since the roadshow. They are as follows:
1) The deal is now a 4-year deal instead of a 3-year deal, and in the 4th year of the deal we will receive another 2% base building raise for everyone. That raise will occur in April 2019. So the raises in the deal are as follows:
July 2015: 1% raise
July 2015: one step added on to Atty III, IV, and turbo (one step = 2.75% raise)
April 2016: 1% raise
April 2017: 2% raise
April 2018: 2% raise
April 2019: 2% raise
Total raises: 8%
Step Increase: 2.75%
Potential Overall Salary Increase = 10.75%
In exchange for this additional raise, we are agreeing to change the language in the MOU to reflect that we are agreeing to pay the reverse pick up beyond the term of this MOU. The OCAA board does not believe this change will significantly affect our bargaining power in future contract negotiations. It simply clarifies the agreement we made when we first obtained 2.7 at 55. In addition to the obvious benefit of another 2% raise, by obtaining a four-year deal instead of a three-year deal, it means we avoid having to negotiate a new contract in early 2018 when the majority of the BOS will be running for election.
2) Annual leave/Vacation/Sick time
There are a couple changes to this portion of the MOU from what was presented at the roadshows. The first is a beneficial change in pregnancy related disability. Most pregnancy related disability pay is limited to 4 weeks before birth and 6 or 8 weeks after birth, depending on whether a C-section occurred. Currently, before a woman can obtain disability pay, she must use up to 192 hours of annual leave first. This significantly limits the amount of disability pay a woman can obtain for a pregnancy, and also reduces the amount of hours she can use after the birth during a parenthood leave. The new MOU reduces the 192 hours to 50 hours. Thus, going forward, a woman will both be able to obtain more disability pay and have more hours available for time off during parenthood leave.
The other change is that for a 90-day period beginning on July 1, 2015, any employee who wants to convert annual leave hours into sick hours can do so, with a cap on sick hours of 1500 hours. Please note that this conversion is entirely voluntary — if you do not want to convert annual leave hours into sick hours you do not have to do so.
The OCAA board is in favor of the tentative agreement and recommends a yes vote. Please make every effort to vote.