AN ORDINANCE relating to standardizing benefits that were bargained in the Master Labor Agreement; amending Ordinance 12014, Section 5, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.010, Ordinance 12014, Section 7, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.040, Ordinance 12014, Section 14, and K.C.C. 3.12.110, Ordinance 12014, Section 19, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.190, Ordinance 4324, Section 27, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.210, Ordinance 18408, Section 2, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.219, Ordinance 12014, Section 21, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.220, Ordinance 15558, Section 2, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.222, Ordinance 12014, Section 22, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.223, Ordinance 13743, Section 1, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.224, Ordinance 7956, Section 6, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.225, Ordinance 12014, Section 23, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.230, Ordinance 12077, Section 5, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.240, Ordinance 12014, Section 25, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.250, Ordinance 12498, Sections 1 and 4 through 7, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.335, Ordinance 12014, Section 50, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.15.020, Ordin
I think. So. We'll see if we can't make some work here. All right. Thank you all. All right. Now we are going to turn to the next item on the agenda, which is a substantial piece of work that the county has been engaged in with our partners in our workforce who are represented by labor unions for a number of years now. And that legislation, with respect to the master labor agreement and participating workers has been transmitted by the executive introduced. This is our first presentation on the actual legislation. Heidi Papageorgiou has prepared the staff report and is going to give us an overview of it. And we are joined by see Denise here, Denise Coughlin with the Coalition, one of the two leaders of the coalition, as well as executive branch representatives as well. And Heidi, will the executive branch and then the. Be joining you at some point here at the table or presenting. As you were, which I will do the overview of the MLA articles and if there's questions that I'm unable to answer, okay, we're. Doing it and you just may if you all want an opportunity, once Heidi's done, you're welcome to give us your take on it. So thank you. And I think for members interest, this will be our first presentation and then we'll look to get questions and issues resolved and hopefully we can act on it at our next committee of the hall and move it forward. That is correct. Mr. Chair. Heidi, Perpetual council staff. The staff report begins on page 33 of your packet. Proposed Ordinance 2018 0178 would approve King County's First Master Labor Agreement between King County and the King County Coalition of Unions. Also the companion led ordinance proposed ordinance 2018 0138 would amend the King County Code to add a number of master labor agreement provisions that would also apply to not represented King County employees. I will begin my staff report by briefly discussing the county's previous process of negotiating collective bargaining agreements, or CBAs, and the structure of the proposed Master Labor Agreement or MLA. I would then conclude my staff report with an overview of the proposed Emily articles and the proposed changes in the King County Code. Prior to the proposed MLA, the County negotiated the different provisions pertaining to human resources processes, leave benefits and payroll practices and individual CBAs. In 2016, Council adopted Ordinance 18405 that require King County and the King County Coalition of Unions to discuss the structure for bargaining, standard practices, procedures and CBA provisions via MLA. The proposed Emily was standardize those practices and procedures and 31 superseding articles that would apply to 22 unions and the Coalition. Under the proposed Emily, a CBA would be known as an appendix to the MLA and would no longer be a standalone agreement. The superseding articles and the proposed MLA would take place of the individual appendix articles on the same topic. With some exceptions, the proposed MLA would also include seven non superseding articles that may or may not replace their article on the same topic in the individual appendix. Council staff will present the 60 MLA appendices at the committee's next hearing on May 2nd. 60. 60? How's that going to work? Well, you. Know. Be slow. Okay. The proposed MLA also includes a memorandum of agreement between King County and the Coalition relating to the county's implementation of a county wide career progression classification project. Essentially, that project would include if all employees whose positions are reclassified. That project were not o those employees were not to suffer a loss in pay. I would like to now draw your attention to table one on page 37 of your packet, and this table summarizes the superseding Emily articles. The table, I'm just kind of going through the crosswalk of the table. The first column is the Emily article number and the Emily the article name. The effect of the Emily on the proposed ordinance. The King County Code Citation that will be impacted as well and make those corresponding changes and the effect what the proposed ordinance for the Kane County Code would be. So starting with Article 2,000,000,002 military leave, that would essentially mirror the language that's currently in King County code. And so that provision would require no change for the code, but just include language in the MLA under Article three unpaid leave of absence that essentially would distinguish the approval authority for medical reasons of leaves and non-medical reasons for leave. I guess I'm going to I'm going to stop here for just a second. Sure. We've got I'm looking at your chart here, 38 articles, right, in this chart. Correct. All right. Now, for the committee's benefit, I want to give a little preview of where you're going here. Are we going to. Is it your intention to walk through all 38 of these? That's my intention. Unless you, Mr. Chair, you prefer otherwise. And I can just highlight. Okay. Well, I want to I hear Councilmember Lambert saying that she would like you to go through all 38 of them. I'm not sure you're going to. That's a lot. And I feel, with all due respect, that we're going to I want to take a sense of my colleagues here, whether there's interest in walking through those or whether folks can maybe take a look at them and ask if they've got specific questions. Could you highlight let me suggest this. Could you highlight what you view based on your work as some of the. He or major provisions in the articles. I understand maybe they're all important, but and then if members have questions about specific ones that you don't cover, we could come back to that because in the interest of time and and and efficacy and interest, I'd like to maybe highlight the key ones. Okay. Absolutely. And then we're going to have to figure out how to do 60. So. Yeah. So jumping over to Article four, leave for volunteer service, that is on page 37 of your packet. The essential change for that is that the currently the county allows employees to utilize up to three days of sick leave to volunteer at an employee's child's school. The MLA and the King County Code would change to allow employees to utilize the sick leave for nonprofit organizations. Also at the child school and any the nonprofit organization would have to be approved on the employee giving program list. So that's one substantive change. And jumping over to Article six on page 38 of your packet. Now donated leaves, one primary change is that with the donated leaves, currently, if an employee receives donated leave, the leave would revert back, revert to the the donor after 90 days of the unused leave. So this would remove that requirement and the donated lee would reside with the donor or donate donated. All right. Let's me do that one because of the donated leave item is very popular here. I think it gets a lot of attention and use. I want to make sure we understand what the change is. And I confessed to having lost track there. Yeah. So with the the donor the donor would offer what, provide donated leave to an employee who is eligible. And then after if there's a remaining 10 hours remaining that was unused for the recipient, usually that donated leave would be would go back to the donor, the person who's donating the leave after 90 days. And what this would do is that that donated leave, those 10 hours would continue to stay with the recipient indefinitely. Correct. So once you give it away, it's gone. It stays that way. And currently, the county, what after the 90 days move that leave back to the the donor. You know, have you heard what the rationale is for that? Why the why the change or could someone how did you want to help us out? Come on. Up to my knowledge, is the administrative burden to go back and forth and have that out to the donor. All right. And we're going to have a we're going to get all sides here. In the. Morning of management and labor. I'm Megan Peterson. I'm the director with the Office of Labor Relations. So the rationale is this was an administrative burden for payroll and central payroll staff to administer with the leave going back and forth. Sometimes it would get missed. It was also sometimes a basis for employees, you know, in some rare cases to sort of game the system if they were close to the cap or over. And so they would donate the leave and then it would come back to them after the end of the year. And what about cash out value upon retirement or severance from the county would would recipient of donated leave be entitled to cash payment. My understanding is once it's with them. Yes, that was that right. No. No. Okay. Apparently. No, that can't be. That says no. Yeah, this is our h.r. Policy advisor here are. And then if you want to come forward to or do we need to. Denise's here is. Asking that denise. Come for. Any issues. Related to non rep code changes associated with the MLA. Okay. And it sounds like with some implementation expertize as well since she's running that fancy new computer system we bought them. All right. Thank you for being here, Denise. All right, Heidi, everyone. Okay, now on Councilmember Lambert. Go ahead. You so hypothetical. We were talking about gaming the system. So, Mr. Jones, that we all love is going to retire. So we all give him 10 hours of sick leave, which he can then cash out as a bonus. That's not. No, no. So what I'm saying is prevent that. So I recently worked with our brick and B people on this. So no, it's actually kept in a separate bucket, but they call them. Buckets. And it's separate on your pay stub like it actually says donated leave versus sick leave. And the donated leaves never been subject to cash out either for vacation. Or for the retirement of, you know, sick leave under retirement. And it will continue to be that way. So somebody can't give somebody a bunch right before they retire and then they can cash it out. That's a great answer. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Go ahead. Okay. So jumping over to Article seven on page one of the AP parental leave, as you may recall, in 2016, the county piloted paid parental leave and with ordinance 184054, their total compensation for the the unions, it extended the program to 2017. And then for the MLA, this would include provisions to contain the program and also for the non representative employees to have that same benefit. And those are the corresponding line numbers for the proposed ordinance for relating to non-representative employees. Continue, not containment continue. I'd also like to add that there were some union groups who hadn't originally signed off on paid parental leave, and this would encompass those groups and it would become part of the contract. So everyone in the coalition who signed off on the MLA would participate in the parental leave program. Councilmember Lambert has a question. Thank you, sir. So if I remember correctly, paid leave, parental leave. There was no requirement that you could work for like a week and then go off on paid parental leave, and then at the end, you'd be required to pay it back. It didn't work for six months after. After it. Is that still the same answer? Yeah. Yeah. So? Well, there is a requirement that you have to have worked for the county for six continuous months of service at the time of the qualifying event. And then you also have to return to the county for six months of service following the leave. Okay, great. So that was my question to that at the six months. It's in both the MLA and in the code. And on both ends point after. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So the next article is Article eight relating to bereavement leave on page 39. For this change, it would increase the number of bereavement days of up to five days instead of three days. And the King County Code would also reflect that. It would also remove the language that entitles eligible employees to use up to three days to sickly if they have exhausted their bereavement leave. That's one item for the non representative represented employees. The next article. Article nine vacation leave cap. There will be a there's a certain cap depending on your hire date for King County employees. Employees who are hired after December 31st of 2017 would have a vacation leave cap of 320 hours, and employees hired before that date would have a cap of 480 hours and that will be consistent in the code as well for non reps and jumping to Article 12 Professional Development Page 41. This is a new pilot that will be available for representing employees to have a professional development program, kind of a scholarship program of $150,000. And there will be a one time program that will be available and obviously this does not apply for non reps. So this will just be for beginning January 1st of 2019. And how you when you say one time, does that mean one year. Or 20 in one year? Yes, correct. And so are there any other questions regarding fund raising? Here's my comment. I think repeatedly we hear from our reverend workforce and others about an interest in additional training opportunities. Has been a consistent theme in my five years here. I know we're short of money, but a one year $150,000. Development program is pretty lean. There's a comment. So from from my perspective. We we did. I know you got it. There's cost and they negotiated that. But. Hopefully going forward, we can continue to invest from my perspective and our employees and their opportunities to grow and develop. It's just an interesting idea. I think it's it's fair to say the discussion at the table was very collaborative on this issue, recognizing that we do have a need for greater training opportunities. And so we just like to study it over the course of the year. And then actually the intention is to extend it, assuming it's working well. Okay, Denise, and this is something that we took from very successful programs and other public places. I know the Seattle city of Seattle has a program like this and the city of Portland also has a program like this. So, yes, it's very limited this time. But if it's something that continues to be successful, labor is, of course, open to expanding the program as much as. Sure as we can response. And I sense this is beyond kind of what might be mere professional training, but this is more development, leadership, development, management, development, that kind of thing. So the way that it's used in other jurisdictions is if it's something that's not related to the job or something that they couldn't get approved at the department level, they go to the separate body and essentially apply for a scholarship and it could even have something that has nothing to do with what they currently do, but they want to explore another career. Well, that sounds good. Thank you. So moving on to Article 14 is on page 42 of your packet relating to reclassification and resulting pay. This would describe the reasons for reclassification for an employee and also particular groups. It also results with the the pay or the resulting result in pay of a reclassification. And this would also be mirrored in the King County Code. Currently this is shown and the career service rules for the county for non represented employees. But this would codify it and put it in in the code. Councilmember Lambert, you're a bit of an expert on this. On the classification and resulting pay are you see that is okay. I confess to not understanding this and oh. Reclassification. So if. You could help. Me a little more. Yeah, sure. So looking at I. Was looking for a cover letter to help me out, but she's pointing to, I think. The the column here for position reclassification. So if an employee requests for their position to be recast, they would have to follow these certain reasons. For instance, an employee's position is not assigned to the correct classification or there has been a significant or gradual change in the employee's body of work for at least one year, and that individual could request for the position to be recast to maybe it will result into a higher salary grade or the same salary grade once they're place in the correct classification or even a lower salary grade. So this will define that process and have a uniform process for for those reclassification requests. What were the objectives of management and Labor with respect to these these changes? Help me understand what we're trying to achieve here from each side. So with respect to reclassification and spousal special duty in particular, we have a myriad of stripes of approaches in the various collective bargaining agreement. So this was a true efficient consistency, a conforming one standard for all of the 60 governments. This is a good example, then of what we were trying to achieve with the master labor agreement. Yeah. Spot on, example. Sure. Councilmember Lambert. Well, thank you for thinking. I'm an expert on that. Maybe that's what happens to you on the employment committee for a decade or more, but thank you. So my thought on this was when you give somebody special duty, it says 30 days to 12 months so that you can have them out of classification for 30 days without increase in their pay right now. Think you might be jumping to Article 50? Yeah. Okay. Let's note you highlight article 15 and Councilmember Lambert can follow up. Yes, sure. So Article 15, special duty on page 43, these would be assignments that would last a minimum 30 days, but up to five years. And there's specific reasons for those assignments that to classify a special duty employee. And those are highlighted under, for instance, the 30 days to 12 month assignments must be approved by the department director. If the reason is due to work that exceeds either the volume or the complexity of what is routine and is for limited duration. There's also a section for term limited term employees, so we can talk about that. But for special duty, there are provisions that if the employee is in a special duty to have to result in pay of that, that the employee would get a premium pay for working in that higher level or for that special duty assignment. So my question is to share with that, that you can take some reclassification for 30 days before you have to pay them out of classification. So I'll chime in here. If you look at Article 37. There's a separate article. For working. Out of classification for less than 30 for less than 30 days. And when does that begin? It is long as it can be one day from one day to 29 days. So that was my concern. That first was the nightmare and paperwork, if it's going to be one day. So I think that's that's counterproductive to the simplest simplification effort we're trying to do. And actually, I think it's a benefit to work out a classification for a day or two or three or whatever, to find out, is this a classification I'd ever be interested in? You could work in a job for two days and say, this is not for me. And and why not have that as an opportunity for people to go into different classifications and see what fits for me? So I don't really like Article 37. But anyway, that's just my thought. Anyway, thank you. Thank you. All right. Okay. So moving on, Article 26, grievance procedure on page 46, this outlines the steps for filing a grievance for the coalition members and essentially and also the level of management that will be notified for those each for each of those steps. I suspect this is another area where consistency. We didn't have it before, but we're going to have it now. Yeah, we're we're very excited about this. And the next one is Article 28 relating to economic equity on page 47. This would essentially allow should any non coalition bargaining unit with King County reach a more favorable combined general wage increase or benefit funding rate, that the Coalition would be able to reserve the right to reopen the MLA to bargain that impact of that decision. Is that applied to non Coalition member unions, is that what you're saying? There were these are these are bargaining units within the Coalition if they achieve a better economic terms in a side agreement that you could reopen. So this would apply to groups outside of the coalition with the exception of are safety sensitive our paramedics county sheriffs and then decisions where a higher combined general wage increase and benefit funding rate is awarded through an interest arbitration process which obviously the county has limited control over. Those would be accepted. That doesn't that would not trigger the economic equity banner. Okay. All right. Okay. So last one that I have is Article 29 Coalition of Unions Incentive Pay. Last one part that superseding articles on page 48. This would provide a premium for the coalition members to receive up to a total of 3.25% premium for signing on to the MLA. So you may recall in January 2018 the Coalition received 1.75% general wage increase. And in the staff report, it also notes that the Coalition received a 1% premium in 2018 and that is not correct. The Coalition has not received that additional 1% yet because the MLA has not been approved. So just kind of breaking out the total premium based on the first or the 2017, 2018 total compensation Emma Way the council would allow a half percent general wage increase for the Coalition. Also the one premium, 1% premium for reaching a tentative agreement of the MLA. And then the 1.75% general wage increase would total to 3.25% if the MLA was approved by council. Is any of that a one time? That doesn't go into the base? No. It all goes into the base. Okay. And how does that compare? I'm looking at the. November 2016 ordinance that adopted the memorandum of agreement here for 20,017 2018, and it addressed these wage increase and premiums. It looks like the numbers here are a touch lower for 2018. It looked like it would be a 2.75% increase for the Coalition. Is this 50 basis points higher for the 4%? Is that superseding this agreement? And so that's right. Yes. So in the course of bargaining, the master labor agreement last year, we agreed to an additional bump of half percent to the general wage increase. Okay. So the Coalition agreed to 2.75 in this prior agreement and now we're bumping that seven basis points. So the Coalition the agreement was a base gwp of 1.75. Right. On ratification of the MLA, an additional 1%. Okay. So that was, I believe, in the 2016 memorandum you're referencing. That's right. And it covers 2018. Correct. And then last year, we agreed to an additional half percent. I see. So that was already been superseded. This agreement had already been superseded. So the half percent will take effect. The one additional 1%, an additional half percent upon your adoption and implementation of the MLA. All right. So it hasn't been approved? That's correct. All right. So what is the economic cost to the county of the 50 basis points. There. Beyond what you're saying agreed to? It's 5.2 million. All right. And that was. Given in exchange for what? Commitments on Labor's side beyond those that they already agreed to in the IMO way. I can speak to but I'll let. You. I mean, I get, I guess I would say, you know, that was part of the MLA. It's, it was something that was a big project. And in the course of bargaining, you know, there was that originally a coalition incentive for passing the MLA and we negotiated that up. So I would say that the reason for it is part of the MLA package. We are in total compensation bargaining right now and we committed to that. I'd also note that politically right now it's difficult for us because the non represented employees now are making more than we are because they got a 3.25% wage increase in January . So I mean that's already been passed. So I guess we're asking for the same wage parity as the non represented employees. All that's compelling, I just don't think what I'm looking at here is are we paying twice for the same thing because that doesn't make sense. I've always felt that we ought to give representative folks who are participating this a premium over non and that was we were supposed to do that. I mean I guess I'm. Well that didn't happen because the non reps got the same amount. So I mean the premium concept essentially for us on Labor side, I mean it's kind of just turned into a general wage increase. And and to point out that Labor will be the coalition groups will be receiving retro payment back to January 1st. So they will they will have received the same amount in terms of the represented and non represented annual wage increase for 2018. That's true. If if it's passed, if it's a premium. Okay. Council member Lambert. Yeah, I see where you're going. And I've been worried about this too. I was when we first started this, and I am a huge supporter of the National Labor Agreement. The idea that we have, what is it, 78 bargaining agreements and 104 unions or some number like that, correct me if I'm wrong, is absurd. So but then when we signed to get on the master labor agreement, I was good with that because I thought it was fair to everybody and so I was fine with that. But now I'm beginning to feel like I'm working for a baseball team and I want, you know, my left fielder. So I'm going to do a signing bonus. You know, I don't think that the taxpayers are going to be really pleased with that continuing. And, you know, I've been on the Budget Committee and, you know, I think it was last year or the year before, I don't remember the amount that the salaries went up was almost the same amount of money as we had to cut out of the general fund. Now I realize that not every employee is paid by the general fund and it's a small relatively amount. So I'm aware of that. But it was interesting to me that the amount we were cutting was about the same amount as as what the salary increases were. And again, I know that it's not straight across because they aren't all directly in place. The $5.2 million is a lot of money, and I haven't heard yet what the count is going to be directly and maybe our budgetary knows better, but I had heard around 40 million so that, you know, a pretty large percentage of what end up having to cut. So it's difficult to see that. And I'm hoping that signing bonuses are a thing of the past and that the idea that working for the county is such a privilege because we get to serve people every day that and B do do as we talked earlier, we do do market analysis on a regular basis. So if we didn't do that, I'd have a completely different opinion, but we do do that. So I think between the market analysis and the benefits and the holidays that and the opportunity to serve, it's a really great place to work. So I'm not sure that signing bonuses should be necessary. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. With respect to the general wage increase, which is our new kind of term, as I think about for COLA, we don't have a COLA anymore. It's a general wage increase. We've gone here, as I understand it, to fixed amounts. Is that right? Yes, that's. Correct. Is that consistent or inconsistent with the adopted labor policies of the County Council? I don't know the answer to that offhand. My I don't recall reading in the old policies which have sort of been dormant for a while reference to that the DWI or COLA. You know, I do want to make just a couple of comments in response to Council Member Lambert's concerns. One issue that was at play in the negotiations last year is that the CPI for the area was rapidly escalating. So I don't have the figure at my fingertips here, but 3.25 is either close to or potentially below what the CPI is for 2018. Right now, it's really 3.5 if. You include housing costs, which is a big. Number of Seattle, Tacoma. So it's you know, I feel like it's pretty fair how they do the CPI. So we we both labor and management felt very solid in the 3.25% general wage increase. And I can't stress enough the efficiencies that this master contract will bring to our complex labor landscape here. So, you know, labor and management felt that this was a very solid, very fair deal. And is the 3.5 for 18 only as 19 addressed? 19 is not addressed. As Dennis referenced. We are currently in negotiations for total compensation for 2019 and 2020 and that will include the general wage increase as well as benefits. Okay. To a comment and and then maybe a question, if I can remember, but the comment is, under our charter, the counties that county council, the legislative branch sets the labor policy. And when you say they are dormant and you can't tell me whether we have a variable or fixed rate in our policies, somebody is dropping the ball there. Either this legislative body is not exercising its obligations to set clear Labor policy and have the executive bargained as our agent, as the charter calls for or the executive is bargaining without any regard to the adopted Labor policies. And I think that we should have some dialog and do some work on that and make sure that we are giving the executive direction as is our obligation under the Charter with respect to Labor policy and understand from the executive who is frankly sometimes closer to the negotiating table, who is too close to negotiate, what is working and not working so we can have clearer Labor policies that give adopted policy and guidance to our bargaining agent, because I for one, feel that this is an area that hasn't had the attention it deserves, given the amount, and given that it's our biggest cost to do everything here at the county labor as it is with any organization. So I want to and I'm asking you to work with me as our head of MLR to take a look at our labor policies, make sure their current and fresh. I'm going to ask my colleagues to engage on this as well, because otherwise it's we're no longer setting policy. We're merely ratifying of what you bring to us. And I, for one, believe that's where we stand today. And that's not proactively setting policy, but merely ratifying what comes before us. And I think that's a dereliction of our obligations under the charter, and it's not fair to the voters. So I want to work with you on that. We would welcome that opportunity. And I understand there was an effort in the 2016 time frame to refresh, update Labor policies and that. There was some work on that. I don't know that we got to the finish line. Yeah. I mean, our our concern and I think we were kind of the stalwarts and that is we really want to take an active role on that as well. The past I know we have and Dustin who's not here today, but as another Coalition co-chair has been involved in past Labor policies, it would definitely be something that we're interested and I'm not trying to make excuses for labor or for management, but keep in mind we're now in our third set of negotiations right now because we've been implementing such a revolutionary problem rolling basis. In 2020, they'll all catch up. So total comp and the MLA bargain will happen at the same time. And I'm not saying we wait until 2020, I'm just saying there is hope at the end of the tunnel. But it's been a bit of a slog and I think Megan can attest. And the approach has been with respect for the executive to come in and brief the Council on an as needed basis with respect to the status of the negotiations and kind of have some dialog and get some informal feedback. To be honest, I don't believe and I appreciate that. I think that's been fine, but I think we owe you more. We owe you clearly thought out policies that are developed in consultation with our stakeholders. We're keeping our fiduciary obligations in mind, keeping our best employer obligation in mind that then you get a vote, that they're adopted , that you know where to go. Dialog, you get different members perspectives and off you go. And it's kind of a well we told them so let's I appreciate it sounds like there's an interest in kind of working on that and. I look forward to doing that with both of both of you, if I can. Casimir Lavrov reiterating my question was with respect to the management side, up for benefits out of this massive agreement in York. You mentioned that the executive believes there are vast or significant. I think maybe was your term of benefits of the simplification here? How do we and what are our plans for measuring that? Because we hear about it. And sometimes I feel like maybe those benefits are there. They may be there. They probably are there. But how do we quantify and we know what them what the general wage increase will cost. And you said about $5 million. How do how do you help us turn to the public and the labor and everybody and say, here is the savings and the efficiencies we achieved? Is there any plans to kind of assess and measure that? Absolutely. So the executive branch is knee deep in looking at metrics to, you know, justify efficiencies, to tell the story of how we are saving taxpayers money. And we will be looking at how long our negotiations take, what efficiencies are gained from bargaining in coalition in terms of the time spent versus bargaining at 61 different small tables for the full gamut of what the CBA covers. One issue that we're continuing to to advance is the need to get away from retro payments, which are very costly. Yeah, they're difficult for our payroll staff to administer. And Denise can attest to this. And the last two total compensation bargains, we have delivered the agreements well in advance of contract expiration. And that is consistent with adopted labor policy. That is that we should not have expired agreements. And I too often I was going to ask you one of my questions. How many how many how many folks are working or how many agreements are there that have lapsed. Right. Which often lead to those retro pay issues. So so we're cognizant that there are models in the private sector of of bargaining over two weeks for an entire, you know, three year contract. That's what I would call a Railton special, you know, expeditious. And, you know, we may not we. May not get there. Two weeks may be a little ambitious, but certainly blowing past the contract expiration. Bargaining in excess of a year is something that we've moved away from with Labor support. But if I got you correctly, you're hoping through the efficiencies that you achieve here with the master Labor Agreement to be able to take your resources in a while are and on the Labor side of the table and address these contracts before they expire. I mean, I had to cut to thin today. That's right. And this essentially did that because we took all of the collective bargaining agreements under the MLA and we brought them all up at the same time. So we didn't have any coalition agreements expire, which I think is a huge win. That is a big win. I mean, that's that's the right thing. Yeah. Folks not folks are working with a contract instead of without and management's working with the contract. And it wasn't easy. I mean, making sure that Michael and others worked very different. Or. Worked very hard over that issue. All right. Why don't you, Heidi, help us with any final hot topics? Oh, I'm sorry, Councilmember Lambert. Thank you very much. So this has been a topic that we've worked on for many, many years. And and getting the master agreement has been the heart of it. You know, we want people to know what the requirements are. I remember one time when I asked for something and they said I would be a change of working environment. And I said, For what? Well, you want to evaluate, you know, customer service. And I'm like, No, that's not a change of work environment. I expect every employee to put their best customer service. So there were some odd things in the past. The donning and doffing is not my favorite, not provision that was really important to one of our chefs, but I don't know that the chef is that interested in the donning and doffing policy. So, you know, I think there's some in the policies in the past that, as you said, people are added on. The other thing was there's two things. One, that the policies for labor used to be in a little handbook, but it wasn't on the computer. And I don't know if it's an ordinance or it's on the computer anymore. I don't know that. And the other thing was that when we did pass a contract that frequently there would be add on route changes that they called pocket changes that were made that were never reported back to us. And so we did a pilot a couple of years ago where we had our attorney at the time temperature and look at all of those were brought over to us, which we didn't even know existed, which was a problem. And. Then they put them in categories of no big deal. Questionable and something that definitely should have been negotiated. And the two lists did not match up. There were a lot of things on the no big deal that I attorneys that was a big deal. So that was enlightening to know that there were things happening post us that we were never informed about. So I think as we go forward, there has to be a circle that comes all the way back to us and that we're in it. So I think as we work on those Labor policies, we might want to specifically address this issue of side agreements and whether we want to formally adopt or clarify the notion of minor. MODERATOR Major and what should get council approval or what shouldn't? I think that, frankly, it's somewhat vague right now and it's just being done as it's being done. So I know that's an interest of yours, Councilmember Lambert. And there's kind of been a protocol developed, and if it's big, send it over. And if not, maybe not. So if I could speak to that. Our office airs on the side of of transmitting monies to council, especially where they have a fiscal impact. We also don't approve them. Yeah. And we view you as our partner. So, you know, the other issues, we're really trying to limit those after the fact, most inevitably working conditions, issues come up that need to be addressed. But that's part of of the greater efficiency as well. Good. All right. Heidi, anything further at this initial briefing? Oh, Councilmember Dutchy, before we jump to that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.. Thank you. Sorry. I apologize if I missed. Come all the way down here. No, no. That was first on my way of thinking. Yeah, I. I look at all this information and the scope of the effort that's clearly gone in underneath all of this is pretty impressive. So I want to thank everyone who was involved for I know each one of these provisions was probably debated in some great detail and probably many of them were hard discussions. When you went back to your respective home offices and talked to the folks you are representing. So thank you for that. I think the the benefit of moving in this direction, of continuing to streamline, consolidate, make things consistent is going to really pay off, as you said. I do want to understand the changes a little better. And I know we're not voting on this today, but I wonder if, like, for example, when I look at the table one, there's a column that talks about the effect of the MLA and then the effect of the ordinance changes for non reps. I want to make sure I understand the changes from today's agreements to the MLA. So like what's new here in this third column of this chart? What's and I'm not 100% sure I've followed all that and it's possible that it's because there's changes to multiple different things. But I would love to understand where we're seeing new things increases, decreases, changes. So the one that jumps out at me, for example, is I'm just going to pick on this one the vacation accruals. Vacation accruals have been something that we have all worked very hard on for a very long time. And I see Debbie Bellum in the back nodding because we were on this some years ago and there was a level of accruals that was the standard limit in county policy and I believe it was fairly well implemented through the bargaining agreements. I don't recall that there were a lot of exceptions to that in the bargaining agreements, except that I'm going back a couple of decades now. Nobody was enforcing them. So you had people with hundreds of hours above the limit on their books, and we went through a very painstaking process of bringing that down to where then it was the amounts were being enforced. And the reason that matters, the reason why it's a problem for somebody to carry a zillion hours on their books is because it's an unfunded liability and we don't know when it will hit. So it makes it hard to budget it, you know, and then if especially if we had layoffs and people wanted to cash it all out and we weren't. So to have the limits is important for as a budgeting exercise. At the same time, we want our employees to be able to manage their leave. We want them to save up some amount of leave for when there's an unexpected need to take some time off and they can use it. That goes for sick leave and vacation. I want to understand, when we increase it now up to 400 and some odd hours, which is a fairly significant increase, what does that mean and why are we doing that? So we actually. Decreased the cap. This was one of the most contentious within our. Yes. Okay. So work a lot of nodding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're we're cognizant that. We are an outlier here in King County in terms of our vacation cap relative to. Our prime is I misremembered the numbers, but I did remember it was an issue. So I guess I'll put that and just say I can only imagine what a difficult conversation that was with your members. And and I appreciate that we're working in that direction because that's just about fiscal responsibility. I mean, we trying to have policies that allow people to be gone when they need to be, when they're sick, when their kids are sick, when their family's sick, take a reasonable amount of time off because we want people to be refreshed and sharp and some of our jobs are really physically demanding. We want people to have their time just to recharge so that they're well and have, you know, a good attitude. At the same time, the way the leaves have been used in some ways is has been really a challenge from, you know, maintaining a fiscal responsibility towards the taxpayer. So thank you for that. But I'm just like, that's it. So you said it's gone down. I read it and I was using my memory to say, Oh, I thought it went up. Which underscores my larger point, which is I need to understand what the changes are better than I can get from this chart. And I don't know. We had to grandfather in current employees got as many of them were relying on that pass for VEBA and for retirement and for other things. So the balance that we struck and what I could tell my constituents is any current employees get this grandfathered in, but it's going away. And any employees that start after, I believe it's December 13th of last year and I think start with the new cap. They're on notice. I can plan for that for their financial future. And I think that's totally fair. People need to have I mean, they've planned to they've worked with specific policies over time. To yank them out suddenly is to break to break a you know, to break the reliance that we have created. The point is, I'd like to understand where we were and where we are. And that doesn't appear in this. This chart is super easy to read. I suppose what I'm asking for is a slightly more complicated chart, and that would be helpful before we get to final passage. Thank you very much and thank you all for your work and thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Belushi. Heidi, final highlights at this initial briefing. I think it's all covered. One thing just to highlight with the non represented employees, the fiscal impact of that, that there will be about approximately $540,000 to implement with a 257,000 general fund charge. And I know we talked about this, but you've got to remind me, are they getting the same general wage increase and why is that? I thought we should have like a 50 basis premium on the represented side. I guess that's a you know, we say they're getting it. That's a decision the council makes every time a budget and we don't have to do that. Right. And the last time I had this discussion with staff, it was, well, if we don't, they'll organize a new union and but they haven't. So I'm I think it's something we ought to we should consider carefully. You your workers are giving up a lot of things that they're entitled to in terms of individually negotiating contracts, in terms they made sacrifices. The table that has to be recognized, it seems to me. So I'm it wasn't that long ago there was a differential. I thought so. Maybe. I know Pat's telling me now. All right. All right. So why are we talking about the unrepresented workforce here in the context of this, in terms of their general wage increase? So according to the executive, the the intention is to continue the practice of extending the same benefits and standards to non. I see. So when where if we're going to endorse this, he's warning us or at least not warning but giving us the heads up here that has an implication for your unrepresented workforce on the budget. So the other. Issue is that they're part of this package you'll be considering involves changes to the code. I see four non. Represented employees that are tethered to the master labor agreement provisions. There's actually two items. Yes. There's the ordinance implementing the MLA and there's the. Ordinance changing the code. As it pertains to the owner. And, and okay. So I'm going to ask for some more information on the unrepresented workforce and the code changes if we're cementing into code some kind of policy that would tie their annual general wage increase to that in the Labor. If that's true and the represented refers to you. Know so what the ordinance that's before you it just brings the code in alignment with the benefits and practices that were adopted in the MLA. Okay. To build on the efficiencies that were previously. Outlined. And to bring even. Greater equity to the King County workforce. By extending those same. Benefits and practices to our. Non represented employees. So that extends those standards and efficiencies to another like 19% of our employees. And council member of the GROW our budget committee chair. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And it's not really a budget comment. I, I just wanted to appreciate the line of questioning and I think it is worth exploring between now and final passage. When I worked at the state level, we struggled with the same question of do non-representative employees get to enjoy all of the benefits of those who are participating in with representation and advocacy without any responsibility to participate? And there's a Supreme Court case pending right now with the issues of why it. Is and some of the solutions. That the state implemented in some years in the budget were to when there was an increased benefit, were to provide that benefits sooner to the represented employees and have the implementation dates be later for non represented. But it's a question that we struggle with at the state level too, and I think it's a very valid one that I hadn't thought of until your line of questioning. Thanks. It's an interesting issue. I mean, we want to treat employees equitably and not have a set of second class employees. But we also have this dynamic of. You know, folks negotiating at the table and what that means. And I just want to clarify, the non-representative place have gotten that 3.25 since January and our membership has not received that. So just ironic, Claire. Yeah. Okay. Well, I, too, want to thank the executive branch and the coalition for these years of hard work and working in a. Really a collaborative way to achieve shared objectives while not ceding your respective interests from the management or the workforce side. I know that sometimes sounds inconsistent, but and sometimes is inconsistent. You've got to you can't always have a shared objective, but it seems like you guys have really made great progress here. As we go forward and maybe in our next meeting of the committee, I'd kind of like to get a sense of whether we've kind of done the big master labor agreement with a lot of things or whether we've kind of gone small and or narrow, if you will, and these these 60 agenda raises that kind of issue for me. And I know that was an issue at one point in terms of how it was characterized when when you started off versus where you at and ended up and what the implications are that for kind of the next round of national labor agreement bargaining and do we broaden its scope or have we gotten most of what we were hoping to achieve out of the process? That would be, yeah, a great discussion. And I suppose it matters whose perspective you have in terms of whether it's a small master first master contract or large. I there were many other topics that the county was interested in tackling, but, you know, this was the first ever master contract and it was a seismic shift psychologically for our labor groups. And so, you know, we'll continue to evolve. Or good anything else. Thank you all for your work on it and we'll look forward to getting questions answered between now and the next committee and the next committee and moving it forward expeditiously. I would for members knowledge, let me make a suggestion here that we have this at our next committee meeting. And unless there is a concern from the legal beagles that we would try and adopt it and on an expedited basis for adoption at the full council meeting that following Monday, because obviously there's a retroactive pay issue here and we like to move things along on that, or at least I do when we can. All right. Is that. I'm seeing nods there. So. Well, we're going up the next meeting with the anticipation that it would be passed out with a do pass recommendation on an expedited basis for that by Monday. All right. All right. Thank you. Thank you.