CEMA | County Employees Management Association

County Finally Comes to Table on Compaction But ...

When CEMA members agreed to extend our MOU last March, part of the agreement was that CEMA and the County would meet to determine where the spread between managers/supervisors and subordinates salaries is less than 10 percent (compaction) and work out an adjustment to correct that spread (realignment). CEMA has been attempting to get the County to meet over these issues for several months now and, finally, they agreed to meet on November 9th.

However, that meeting was not with the Labor Relations Director, Brian McKenna, nor the Human Resources Director, Joanne Cox. Instead, we were relegated to lower level staff. More importantly, they immediately took the position on behalf of the County that there is no agreement to apply a hard and fast rule establishing a minimum of a ten percent (10%) band between a supervisor or manager and their highest paid direct report.

The CEMA representatives pointed out that this was the agreement at the time of the extension and CEMA felt betrayed by the County's position. Unfortunately, the County representatives in the room were not in a position to alter the County's position. So, the meeting was adjourned with the County Representatives promising to take the issue to the Labor Relations Director and the CEMA representatives promising to take the issue to the County Executive (see story below) and the Board of Supervisors if necessary.

CEMA meets with New County Executive

CEMA representatives met with the new County Executive, Dr. Jeff Smith, on November13^th to get acquainted and to get some issues that have been left hanging back on track. Attending the meeting (Pictured at the left) were Lucy Sylva, HHS ;Aileen Arellano, Public Health ;OE 3 Public Employee Division Director, Don Dietrich; CEMA Representative, Prudence Slaathaug; CEMA President, Amando Cablas; Richard Nichols, Public Health.

The agenda for the meeting included:

T2010;
The breakdown in compaction/salary correction discussions;
The use/misuse/abuse of Reemployment lists in HHS (including the fact that CEMA/OE3 is preparing to file a lawsuit over this) ;
Compensation for CEMA level employees working H1N1 Clinics;
The removal of Public Health and DADS from HHS;
Problems with HHS Human Resources;
A Schedule for future meetings.

In the hour that Dr. Smith was able to allocate us, we were only able to discuss the first three items on this agenda. On those items Dr. Smith had the following responses. On the Deloit T2010 recommendations for Valley Medical Center, Dr. Smith stated that he had serious concerns about the value of the recommendations and he was prepared to halt all further implementation until he was able to take a good look at them for himself. With regard to salary compaction, he agreed that a 10% buffer between supervisors and their supervisees was a reasonable policy that he would support. Finally, he agreed that rehire lists should be strictly adhered to and he agreed to look into and attempt to resolve the specific problems that CEMA brought to his attention.

Dr. Smith agreed that regular meetings between himself and CEMA should be scheduled both to resolve the remaining items on CEMA's and to prevent future issues from becoming problems. Our next meeting is being scheduled either on December 22^nd or 23 ^rd at which time we will follow up on the issues previously discussed and continue down our list of issues. If you have an issue that you think should be discussed with the County Executive, let us know.

Members only!