Workers represented by the City of Fresno Professional Employees Association (CFPEA) began their two-day strike on Tuesday, with more than 100 workers forming picket lines at City Hall and the Fresno Municipal Service Center.
The strike emerged after CFPEA rejected the city’s final offer and declared an impasse on Oct. 14, with 77% of union members voting in favor of a strike thereafter.
Mayor Jerry Dyer held a news conference inside City Hall and explained that the strike has resulted in impacts on city services, with the Fresno Area Express seeing 311 routes cancelled on Tuesday alone.
“I think it was a very lucrative offer; it was an offer that was very consistent with what we had offered other non-public safety labor unions,” Dyer said of the final offer the city made to the union.
CFPEA leadership says otherwise.
“My membership feels that they are undervalued as city employees and they're trying to get a fair and equitable deal,” said Jesse Gonzalez, president of CFPEA.
The CFPEA wants the following:
- A 3% pay increase
- A minimum of 1 day off per week
- The ability to select work shifts by seniority
- For the city to complete phased salary increases that were to be implemented in 2018 following a Classification and Compensation Study
The city’s final offer consisted of:
- A 2% ongoing salary increase retroactive to June 17, 2024.
- A 1% one-time payment based on annual base salary.
- Implementation of remaining increases from the 2018 classification and compensation study retroactive to June 17, 2024.
- Increases in safety shoe vouchers, premium pay, certification pay, and uniform allowances.
- A $125 annual reimbursement for prescription safety glasses.
- An option for employees to credit unused holiday leave into a Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) at retirement.
The city’s offer to CFPEA had a value of about $2.5 million whereas the union’s ask is valued at over $4 million, according to Mayor Jerry Dyer in a news conference on Tuesday.
“We have a fiscal responsibility to the taxpayers of the City of Fresno,” Dyer said during the news conference, adding “we would always like to pay our employees more, but the simple fact is, sometimes we cannot afford to, especially during times when we're having fiscal challenges.”
According to Dyer, non-CFPEA union workers joined CFPEA members in solidarity, with the Fresno Area Express (FAX) being heavily impacted, resulting in 311 routes being cancelled on Tuesday.
Dyer says the city fully expects the strike to continue as planned on Dec. 18, but said the city is always available to return to the negotiating table to resolve the strike.
According to Gonzalez, employees are expected to be available on-call every day, which has led to some members being called while on vacation.
“I have had members that have been on vacation with their families in Disneyland getting a phone call from a manager saying ‘I need you to handle this.’”
Cheri Kennedy, the vice president for CFPEA and a risk analyst for the city, says the strike is a uniting moment for the workers, who represent all departments of the city.
We affect all of the departments within the city, we work very hard and just want to feel valued as a City of Fresno employee so that we can continue to serve as we do each and every day,” Kennedy said.
Councilmember and supervisor-elect Luis Chavez visited the picket line outside of City Hall. Chavez says today’s strike is a sign of what’s to come in the next year for the city.
“Next year, we actually have eight unions that will be up for renewal, so we're setting the tempo with this first initial conversation here,” Chavez said.
Chavez said he hopes the union and the city can come to an agreement by Friday.
This article first appeared on Fresnoland and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.