Fresno city employee strike ends after one day of picketing with a proposed contract deal
A strike by several hundred City of Fresno employees that disrupted bus routes and some other city services Tuesday ended with a proposed contract agreement after a single day of picketing.
Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer and Jesse Gonzalez, president of the City of Fresno Professional Employees Association, announced Wednesday that a tentative contract was agreed upon after several hours of negotiations Tuesday evening. The union represents about 425 employees, primarily those who work in supervisory roles in departments across the entire city bureaucracy.
Neither Dyer nor Gonzalez would detail features of the agreement, instead preferring that Gonzalez present the proposal to his membership for a ratification vote during the week of Jan. 6. The Fresno City Council will likely consider the contract at its Jan. 9 meeting, Dyer said.
“I feel confident that what we came up with (Tuesday) night will meet (employees’) needs for the time being, so that we will be able to move forward,” Gonzalez said. “The city team came together, our team came together, and we hashed it out, and I feel there’s definitely an acceptable offer for my people.”
The contract is retroactive to January 2023 and, if approved by the union and City Council, would run through mid-June 2025 – a timeline that would bring the two sides back to the bargaining table in March, just three months from now.
“Personally, I don’t like one-year contracts because you’re always in negotiations, and I think that’s disruptive to the workforce and it creates a great deal of uncertainty on the part of the employees,” Dyer said as union representatives nodded in agreement.
But the city’s uncertain financial picture, complicated by rising expenses and declining sources of income such as sales taxes, require the city to consider contracts for its various employee unions – including the professional white-collar employees – on a year-to-year basis for the time being.
“Our employees are deserving of every penny that they get and then some, but we can only provide them with what we can afford as a city,” Dyer added.
Without going into details, Gonzalez said Tuesday night’s negotiation sessions narrowed the issues of contention down to five, including some non-monetary factors. “I can tell you that a lot of our concerns were met … ,” he said. “And since those issues have been addressed in one way or another, that’s why I believe this will be an overall agreement for my members.”
Fresno City Manager Georgeanne White said that the strike had some effects on city operations, including the FAX, or Fresno Area Express, bus system, but other managers and directors in the transportation department filled in for some of the striking employees to reduce disruptions. “I believe at the end of the day we did have about half of the routes covered and half of the buses in operation.
“I want to respect the fact that labor unions have the absolute right to strike,” Dyer said, “and they did so yesterday, (and) although that’s not what we want, sometimes that’s where it ends up.” He expressed his appreciation that strikers who picketed in front of City Hall on Tuesday remained respectful as they spent the day in the cold weather.
This story was originally published December 18, 2024 at 2:11 PM.
