City of Eugene seeks mediation in contract negotiations with AFSCME union

The city of Eugene and the union representing more than 650 city employees are headed to mediation after months of contract negotiations.

The city notified leaders of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 1724 on Monday, July 27, that it would request mediation through the Oregon Employment Relations Board.

Union members are seeking higher wages and changes to the city’s use of limited-duration employees, who they say are increasingly filling permanent positions.

AFSCME 1724 represents employees like custodians, airport workers, library assistants, parks specialists and wastewater maintenance mechanics. It’s one of Eugene’s six union-represented employee groups. The city employs more than 1,500 workers, including those not represented by a union.

The union’s three-year contract with the city expired June 30. The parties bargained for roughly five months without reaching a tentative agreement. The union offered to schedule additional bargaining sessions in August, but the city opted for mediation. 

“We took some time to reflect on everything you shared on Friday and think that we could benefit from extra help to advance our conversations and come to agreement,” the city’s lead negotiator Jennifer Lleras Van Der Haeghen wrote in a Monday email to union leaders. “We are filing for mediation today so that we can continue to work together.”

Union leaders say worker pay has fallen behind inflation and regional public-sector wages. 

“There’s a ton of people who have come to me, and they had a vision of who the city of Eugene was by how it presented itself,” said Monica Bielski Boris, the union’s council representative. “That’s really been shattered by this bargaining in some ways.”

The union’s initial proposal totaled more than $85 million, city Chief of Staff Brooke Freed said in a statement on behalf of the city’s negotiating team. Because of the “distance between economic proposals,” the city asked for a mediator to help facilitate negotiations, she said.

“The City of Eugene holds the goal of being an employer of choice by offering fair wages and meaningful benefits that attract, retain, and support a talented workforce,” Freed told Lookout Eugene-Springfield in an email. “At the same time, we have a responsibility to be good stewards of public resources and ensure that we maintain financial capacity to provide the services our community relies on.”

Pay raises

Under the current contract, annual cost-of-living raises for employees represented by the union are tied to inflation but capped between 2% and 4%.

Leaders with AFSCME 1724 initially proposed 6% cost-of-living raises each year for three years, arguing their capped wages failed to keep pace with high inflation during the pandemic. The city initially countered with 1% to 3% annual raises, later increasing that offer back to 2% to 4%, according to the union. 

Freed said the city’s current wage proposal includes a 3.2% cost of living raise effective July 1, though the Consumer Price Index, a “standardized gauge of inflation,” was at 2.8%. 

Eugene’s proposal also includes “market increases” for maintenance workers and geographic information systems technicians, and “new or higher” certification pay — pay bumps for workers with professional certifications — for 11 worker classifications.

Both parties have agreed on “increased pay” for court operations specialists and traffic engineering staff, Freed added. 

“While the City and union made progress on a number of issues during 13 bargaining sessions over 150 days, the City recognized that because AFSCME proposed the same [cost of living adjustments] and pay adjustments three times, and a fourth proposal with very minor adjustments, a mediator could be helpful,” Freed said.

Bielski Boris said more than 76% of represented employees are already at the top step of their pay range, meaning future pay increases largely depend on market adjustments. The city rejected adding more steps to the pay range, Bielski Boris said.

Eugene’s fleet crews, who maintain city equipment, fire trucks and police vehicles, haven’t received a raise outside of a cost-of-living adjustment in more than 10 years, according to fleet services worker Rae Williamson.

“We had a member talk about not being able to afford childcare,” Bielski Boris said. “People that are struggling to make rent or to eat, going to food banks.”

Chad Tardie works in the subsurface technical unit under Eugene’s Public Works Maintenance Division, monitoring the city’s 880-mile sewer system using CCTV cameras. He said he wants a wage that reflects the price of groceries, gas and childcare for his three children going “up and up and up.”

“We’re not asking for the sun, the moon, and the stars,” Tardie said at a rally outside City Hall in late June. “We’re not being greedy. We’re just trying to keep up with the way that the world actually is today.”

Union President Adam Epstein, an application support technician with the planning and development department, said Eugene’s negotiating team wants wages determined primarily through market studies conducted every three years and aims to pay about 4.5% below the median wage of comparable jurisdictions like Salem, Springfield, Beaverton and Gresham.

The union argues that approach has consistently left employees underpaid, while management positions earn more competitive salaries. 

“A lot of what our members have said during our bargaining sessions when they bring them in is that they took the job knowing that they would be underpaid,” Epstein said. “They didn’t realize how underpaid they would be, and they assumed that they would catch up.”

The city’s current wage proposal includes “market alignment,” stating that the city has proposed establishing “a regular process for market wage adjustments.” 

Union leaders reported an uptick of members with side jobs to bring in more income, adding that about 40% of represented employees don’t live in Eugene. 

“Our members are falling so far behind that most of them cannot live in the city limits,” Epstein said. 

Limited-duration employees

Union leaders are also seeking changes to the city’s use of limited-duration employees, arguing positions intended for temporary jobs, like special projects and grant-funded work, are increasingly being used to fill ongoing staffing needs. 

Bielski Boris and Epstein said old provisions in the current contract create a “two-tier workforce” where limited-duration employees perform the same work as permanent staff but lack the same contractual safeguards, like just-cause protections and seniority. 

“It’s a position that’s really dangerous for our members,” Epstein said.

Freed said 21 of the union’s more than 670 members are limited-duration workers, whom the city hires “under certain circumstances” like backfill for employees on leave, grant-funded positions, project-based work without budgeted full-time workers, and “other time limited initiatives.”

“Beyond addressing short term operational needs and funding constraints, the LD [limited duration] classification gives the City flexibility to pilot new programs or functions without committing to a permanent position; this is an important tool when a long-term funding source is still unidentified,” Freed said. 

As part of this year’s bargaining, the parties agreed to extend health benefits cost-sharing to the families of limited-duration employees; previously, only the worker was eligible to be insured.

Epstein said the union proposed ways to make it easier for Eugene to use temporary employees to cover protected leave and to extend the default length of limited-duration appointments so changes to the use of limited-duration staff would be “more approachable” for the city. The city declined most of those proposals, he said. 

The city did not agree to extending the “full rights of the contract” to these employees because Eugene believes those rights “should be reserved for employees who applied for and hold full-time regular positions,” Freed said. 

Next steps

The parties must spend at least 15 days in mediation facilitated by a mediator with the state Employment Relations Board, per Oregon law. Mediation could take weeks or months, union leaders said. If parties reach an impasse, there’s a final offer process and 30-day cooling-off period. 

If the union then votes to go on strike, it must give the city a 10-day notice. 

“We’re going to be demonstrating to the city that people are ready and willing to do it,” Bielski Boris said. “The services that we provide are so necessary, and you know we’re not asking for anything unreasonable or that’s going to break the city’s bank.”

Freed said the union is proposing an $85 million contract as the city faces a $5 million budget gap in the cycle beginning in 2027. 

“While facing declining revenues and increase[d] costs, balancing these priorities requires thoughtful decision making,” Freed said. “We are committed to investing in our employees while preserving fiscal sustainability needed to maintain services.”

But Bielski Boris said Eugene’s general fund only pays for a portion of represented employees. 

“It’s only about a quarter or a fifth of our members that are funded from the general fund,” she said. “So how are these other funds doing? They’re just like, ‘Ooh, bad. They’re all doing bad.’”

She urged people against doing the work of city workers if the union goes on strike, like volunteering to clean parks or helping out at the library.

“It won’t be long, but they need to see what it looks like when we’re not working,” she said.