Features

Berkeley’s two largest public employee unions blocked traffic outside city offices Tuesday to protest a cost-savings proposal requiring them to take mandatory time off without pay. 

Chanting “We say no to MTO,” more than 100 members of Service Employee International Union Locals 790 and 535, which represent about 1,200 city workers, walked off their jobs at about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday to attend the half-hour rally. 

“If the city does not remove MTO off the table we will be back here next week a little more forceful,” said Sandra Lewis regional vice president of Local 790. “If they think the streets are closed now, they haven’t seen anything yet.” 

Lewis’ speech was greeted with enthusiastic honks from drivers of garbage trucks, recycling trucks, public works pickup trucks, tree trimming trucks and parking enforcement gophers that clogged a block of Milvia Street between Center Street and Allston Way. 

The employees may get their wish. On Wednesday, the city offered workers an alternative to mandatory time off, according to Anes Lewis-Partridge, field director for Local 535. Neither Lewis-Partridge, nor city officials would reveal the city’s offer as of press time. 

To help close an $8.9 million structural deficit, City Manager Phil Kamlarz in February proposed closing non-essential city services one day a month starting in July to save $1.2 million. Police officers, firefighters and garbage collectors will not be subject to the closures. 

SEIU members, who comprise the majority of city office workers, public works employees and parks employees, say the proposal unfairly targets them while leaving higher paid police and firefighters unaffected. 

“I just want it to be equal throughout,” said Matt Shorgren, a parks department employee. He said the proposal would effectively negate the 5 percent raise he was scheduled to receive. 

Last year the city, looking to close a budget deficit, struck deals with nearly all of its unions, including police, to forgo scheduled salary increases in return for the city agreeing not to impose future give backs for the remainder of their contracts. 

Without the option of requiring unions to surrender scheduled raises to help close the budget deficit, Kamlarz has proposed the once-a-month layoffs. 

The city can implement the closures unilaterally, but Kamlarz said Tuesday that he remained open to listening to union proposals for saving money without the layoffs. 

Eric Landes-Brenman, of Local One, which represents city managers, said his union would present proposals for streamlining city operations to save money without one-day closures.  

“MTO is broadly opposed as an unimaginative an blunt instrument to get at savings,” he said. “It would really hurt morale.”