After convincing state lawmakers and Duval County voters on the merits of a pension half-cent sales tax, Mayor Lenny Curry’s final challenge is to get further buy-in from the impacted unions.
It will take a little more bending from his first offers pitched Tuesday to the Jacksonville Supervisors Association and the Laborers’ International Union of North America local chapter.
Jason Geiger, president of the supervisors association, paused slightly before answering if the initial offer was in good faith.
“It’s not a negative offer,” he said.
Ronnie Burris, the business agent for the local laborers’ union, went slightly further. When asked if the city’s offer was a good faith gesture: “Not really.”
The two unions comprise half of the General Employees’ Pension Plan organizations.
Their offers Tuesday had similarities: Defined benefit plans for new employees would be closed and, in exchange, the group’s employees would receive a range of salary increases and one-time bonuses.
The salary bumps are the same. Employees would receive a 4 percent increase starting Oct. 1, another 3 percent in 2018 and a 2.5 increase the year after that.
The difference is the bonuses being offered. Employees of the supervisors’ associations would receive a bonus of 2 percent of their salaries. Laborers’ union employees would receive a 1 percent payout.
The difference in those offers comes from outcomes from a 2 percent pay cut implemented in 2010. The supervisors association never received a restoration, while the laborers’ union did.
On the pension side, the initial offer has new employees paying 8 percent of their salary toward their retirement while the city contributes 10 percent for the first 15 years and 12 percent thereafter.
Still, the proposed one-time payouts are an early sticking point.
“They’re not going to agree to that,” Burris told city attorneys Tuesday afternoon.
The laborers’ union comprises about 300 employees in the areas of sanitation, parks and public works.
Those employees are on the lower end of the pay scale, said Burris, and make between $22,000 and $36,000 a year. A 1 percent bonus after taxes doesn’t do much for them, he said.
Burris said the organization would “most definitely” be counter the city’s offer on both wages and pension with a “bigger package all the way around.”
Closing the pension deal to new employees, however, he didn’t consider a big issue.
As for the supervisors group, Geiger said the wages aspect of the offer would definitely be countered.
Like Burris, Geiger said the percentage of the bonus just doesn’t do much for his employees, who average about $40,000 a year.
The two other general employees unions — the local chapters of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Communications Workers of America — will receive their offers Thursday.
All of the general employees’ unions must agree to have their current pension plans closed to new employees for the plan to take effect.
The law passed earlier this year requires at least one of the city's three pension plans –– general employees, police and fire, and correctional –– be closed.
It’s unknown whether the offers will be the same for unions representing firefighters, police and corrections officers. City attorneys sit down with those union officials Friday.
The mayor addressed the supervisors’ organization heads Tuesday morning prior to the union’s meeting, calling the offer fair to employees who have taken pay cuts and not received raises in years.
He said it also was fair to taxpayers by closing such unsustainable “dinosaur” defined-benefit plans many people don’t have in Jacksonville.
He backed that by saying 65 percent of those who voted on the pension sales tax approved of the plan
The next step of his “bold” plan, Curry said, was to fix the issue once and for all — but that requires cooperation from the unions.
“I’m asking you all to be bold with me,” he said.
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