Hundreds of state workers gathered in front of Mission Valley State Building Wednesday, Oct. 21, demanding Governor Gavin Newsom negotiate a new contract that includes better pay and health care benefits.
Organized by SEIU Local 1000, a union of more than 100,000 California state workers including state nurses, DMV and Employment Development Department employees, the workers said they have been out of contract for more than 100 days.
“On June 30th, the state walked away and stopped bargaining with us,” said Dorrie Steadman, president of SEIU Local 1000 San Diego. “We want them to come back to the bargaining table and bargain with us.”
The union’s last contract expired in June. Since then, it has been in stalled negotiations to get a new one. Some of the demands in the proposed contract include a 20 percent wage raise over three years, higher state coverage of health care costs and flexibility to work from home. The union usually negotiates wages and benefits for all its members.
Kyeesha Lewis, a licensed vocational nurse at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility and a single mom, said the lack of a new contract is causing her to work two jobs, one full-time and the other part-time. “Come out here and see how hard we work, the price of gas is high, the cost of food is high, the cost of living is high,” Lewis said.
Lewis hoped that the state would resume negotiations with SEIU Local 1000. “We didn’t just walk away from our jobs today without a purpose,” she said. “We walked away from our jobs today so that California can understand that without us, there is no California.”
Jorge Ledezma, a San Diego County worker, said he joined the rally to support state workers because wages have been stagnant where he works, while the cost of living has increased. “Oil changes, car washes, kids’ daycare, everything has gone up,” Ledezma said.
Angela Musallam, a spokesperson for the California Department of Human Resources, told the press that the department “remains focused on achieving a fair and responsible agreement and continues to be available at the bargaining table.” Negotiations between the state and the union are scheduled to resume on Oct. 30.
The strike, which also happened in San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland, and Los Angeles, is the first in the union’s 44-year history. It said 96.2 percent of its members voted to authorize it.
The union accepted a 3 percent salary reduction a year ago to help balance the state’s budget. Under Newsom’s governorship, state workers have accepted pay cuts in three separate years.
“We work for the fourth largest economy in the world, and they can’t afford to pay state workers a living wage,” said Steadman, who works as a registered nurse at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility.
