At the February meeting of the Metro Civil Service Commission, representatives from SEIU Local 205 spoke at the public hearing on a new pay plan being proposed by the Human Resources department. The new pay plan affects thousands of city employees across dozens of General Government departments and was developed as the result of the Deloitte pay study conducted in 2014-2015, which SEIU participated in at several key stages.
The proposed pay plan for Metro General Government employees includes many improvements that Local 205 has been loudly advocating for over the last several years. Among other things, there are real pay increases for thousands of employees in the SR and TG classifications. The Union also supports the reclassification and upgrades for corrections officers at the DCSO and upgrades for 911 staff at the Emergency Communications Center.
One part of the current proposal that SEIU does not support is an expansion of open range classifications across Metro. Based on academic research and from feedback the Union got from Metro employees, adding more open range classifications to the pay plan does not help current employees or improve services to the public. The Union also raised concerns about the methodology of some of Deloitte’s findings in the pay study for the ECC as well as a recent effort by the Health Department to resist upgrades for some of its staff.
Click HERE to see SEIU's presentation about the proposed Metro pay plan!
“Most of the proposals in this pay plan proposal gets a thumbs-up from our members,” said Brad Rayson, president of Local 205. “Salary increases for the lower pay grades are a long-time coming after the sacrifices city employees made during the Great Recession. But there are still some concerns we would like to see addressed and we hope that the Civil Service Commission takes action on those.”
SEIU had been involved in the pay plan process from the very beginning. Union members across the departments wrote up proposals for certain positions to be reviewed and upgraded and that information was submitted to both Deloitte and to Metro. Many of the Union’s recommendations were supported by the pay study as early as last year when an extra 3% pay increase was implemented for the benchmarked positions. The Union’s bargaining committee and staff representatives met multiple times throughout the development of the pay plan proposals as well and employees have continued to have a pipeline to information and updates on the process through SEIU at monthly chapter meetings and even special called meetings.
The Civil Service Commission will continue to review the pay plan proposal and is expected to vote on some kind of modified proposal at their next meeting on March 8. Whatever is approved by the Commission will then proceed to council as legislation and the new plan could be enacted early enough to take effect as part of this year’s city budget.