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As visitors and locals alike kicked off Solvang’s annual Danish Days celebration, most of the city’s employees entered their fourth day of strike.
“I don’t think any of us really wanted to go to strike,” said union member Candice Libera at Solvang’s City Council meeting last Monday when councilmembers voted to impose a “last, best, and final offer” that didn’t meet the union’s demands. “But we feel very strongly about our rights, about being valued, and being listened to.”
Teamsters Local 986 represents 30 City of Solvang employees — a majority of the staff. The union started contract negotiations with city management in April. Those negotiations stalled when the union sent a declaration of impasse on June 25.
In the following summer months, no agreement was reached. Solvang held to their June offer: a 4 percent raise annually for the next three years (the duration of their contract). The union had requested a 4 percent raise for the first year and a 6 percent raise for the following two years.
At the council meeting, the city’s manager, Randy Murphy, said that while hourly employees’ cost-of-living increases have not quite kept up with inflation (about a 6 cent difference on the dollar, according to his math), Solvang offered a generous benefits package, penciling out to $38,000 worth of benefits per employee per year.
“The bottom line [is] the city has offered a generous COLA [coast-of-living adjustment], greater than CPI [consumer price index], and more than a majority of the other jurisdictions in our area. Offering anything close to what they have very recently demanded is not fiscally sound and unsustainable in the long term.”
During public comment, union member Jeff Lee said that non-union employees also enjoyed these benefits, and that the benefits came from city management offers, not from union demands or negotiations.
“When we look at this offer, there was nothing economically based that came from your [represented] city staff,” he said.
Union members have pointed to the large raises received by some non-union members in the past year. A union supporter wrote to the Independent that the city’s manager’s top possible salary increased by 42 percent, and the utility and public work director’s salaries increased by 39 percent.
Murphy addressed this argument at the September 14 City Council meeting as well, saying that a compensation study completed by contracting company RGS found that several management positions were underpaid, while the hourly positions were within a normal range.
Assistant to the city manager, Olivia Uribe Mutal, said the city is ready and willing to return to the bargaining table.
Danish Days, a citywide tradition, is not run by the city itself but instead by a nonprofit with a volunteer board. Security and cleaning crews are contracted and not impacted by the strike. As of Friday afternoon, the celebration remained on track.
