Raises are restored for California state workers in new SEIU Local 1000 deal. Here’s how much

California state employees represented by SEIU Local 1000 will receive a 4.55% raise when their full pay is restored next month under an agreement finalized Friday.

The new agreement restores previously negotiated raises that employees were scheduled to receive before Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature imposed pay cuts on them last year, when the state was expecting a budget deficit due to the coronavirus.

The agreement restores a 2.5% raise employees were scheduled to receive last July and a 2% raise they were scheduled to receive this July, plus another .05%, according to two people familiar with the agreement who shared details on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to do so.

Last year’s raise will not be retroactive, and the agreement doesn’t include any bonuses, such as essential worker bonuses, that some employees had hoped for, according to the sources.

Local 1000 spokesman Brian Nash declined to share details of the agreement Friday.

The agreement restores employees’ base pay, which was reduced by 9.23% last year, and eliminates the two days off per month employees have been receiving to make up for the pay reduction under a furlough-like personal leave program.

Workers will have to resume contributions to a fund that supports their retirement health insurance, according to the sources. Those contributions, which were suspended during the pay cuts, amount to 3.5% of pay for Local 1000 employees.

All of the unions representing state employees negotiated pay cut agreements with the administration last year. While the specifics varied, most state employees took base pay cuts of 9.23% in exchange for two flexible days off each month.

The unions have been in negotiations over restoring pay since Newsom announced a $76 billion budget surplus last month. His budget proposal for the year ahead said the pay cuts would end “automatically” for some unions, but didn’t specify whether the raises would be reinstated. His administration invited all of the unions to negotiate terms.

Local 1000, which represents about 100,000 state employees according to its latest contract agreement, appears to be the first to finalize an agreement.

Negotiating the agreement was one of the last tasks of outgoing union president Yvonne Walker, first elected in 2008, who lost her leadership post last month to Richard Louis Brown.

Brown, a self-styled “outsider” who shuns many of the union’s norms, is scheduled to become its president by June 30.

The union’s board of directors voted Wednesday to donate $1 million to support Newsom in an upcoming recall election. Walker called an emergency meeting to vote on the donation four days after she lost to Brown.

This story was originally published June 4, 2021 at 7:59 PM with the headline "Raises are restored for California state workers in new SEIU Local 1000 deal. Here’s how much."