County workers want new contract

BY COLBY FRAZIER
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

With purple shirts and picket signs, hundreds of rowdy Santa Barbara County employees, who are represented by SEIU Local 620, rallied in front of the County Administration Building yesterday, where they demanded a “fair” labor contract from their employer.
“We all work really hard,” said Hunter Quinn, who works in the County’s Department of Children Supportive Services and addressed the crowd of about 300. “This county works because we do. We deserve to be taken care of just like everyone else.”


Quinn said the union has been at the negotiating table with the county for months and that little has been accomplished.
Fueling the fire for the more than 2,000 county employees represented by SEIU 620, was the expiration of their previous three-year contract, which saw its last day on Sunday.
“We’re now working without a contract,” Quinn said.
The Santa Barbara rally was held in conjunction with similar rallies at the Betteravia Government Center in Santa Maria and the county’s Administration Building in Lompoc.
Despite the blunt message sent by union members to county officials yesterday, Lisa Pompa, a staff field representative for the union, said the negotiations are “cordial” and that the two parties have not yet reached an impasse.
“The snail’s pace shows that we’re not a priority to them,” Pompa said.
The county is staying tight-lipped about the negotiations.
“We are at the bargaining table actively negotiation,” said William Boyer, the county’s communications director. “We would prefer to keep the discussions at the bargaining table. That’s the appropriate place for contract discussions to take place and when we do have an agreement that all the parties can agree on we’ll be able to say more.”
Pompa said the employees represented by the union are asking for annual cost of living increases and improved health care benefits.
Quinn said he can’t afford to insure his daughter under his county plan and has several colleagues who have taken their families off of their health care in order to be insured by either Medi-Cal or the county’s Healthy Families plan.
The range of employees represented by SEIU 620 ranges in diversity from public health workers, to legal secretaries in the District Attorney and Public Defenders Offices to road crews in the Public Works Department.
Scott Perkins, a heavy equipment operator in the Public Works Road Yard, said 95 percent of his colleagues were present at the rally.
Perkins, a brawny man who fit the cliché of a Public Works employee, and many of his fellow Road Yard workers could be seen pulling their purple union shirts on over their orange work shirts before the rally began.
“We’re here on our own time,” Perkins said. “It’s just getting harder and harder for employees.”
Perkins said each year it becomes more and more difficult to retain good employees because the amount of money being pulled out of each paycheck is far outpacing the amount of money going in.
Darcy Freegard, a custody records specialist who works for the Sheriff’s Department at the county jail, said she has to do everything in her power to make her base salary more in order to make ends meat.
“Gone are the 40-hour weeks,” she said. “Luckily I have a husband with a different union job.
“If I was a single parent I wouldn’t be able to do it.”