The Votes Are In!
2023 Readers' Choice is back, bigger and better than ever!
View Winners → 
Pasadena City Council Focuses Efforts on City’s Labor Policies
News Nov 17, 2016
– Photo by Terry Miller/Beacon Media News
by
share with
Non-represented employees receive ‘cost of living’ pay raise
By Gus Herrera
The Pasadena City Council unanimously approved three items this past Monday, which will hopefully benefit local employers and employees alike.
The first item on the evening’s agenda approved amendments to the Joint Powers Agreement (JPA) for the Foothill Employment and Training Consortium (FETC) to continue to “administer employment and training programs” for local individuals and businesses. Amendments to the JPA were required in order for the agreement to comply with the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014 (WIOA) and, thus, continue to receive funding.
The FETC includes the cities of Arcadia, Duarte, Monrovia, Sierra Madre, South Pasadena, and Pasadena, all of which have benefitted in the past years from the critical employment services offered by the Foothill Workforce Development Board (FWDB).
A Public Works employee spruces up a traffic signal pole on Colorado Tuesday afternoon. A year ago council authorized a 2 percent cost of living increase for the city’s non-represented workers. – Photo by Terry Miller
Under the WIOA, the FWDB, a 25-member board made up of local representatives from business, labor, education, and government, oversees these employment/training programs.
According to city staff’s report, the FWDB has been successful in serving “its two primary target groups – job seekers and employers.” The FWDB has passed “eight or nine out of nine performance measures” over the past few years, achieving a “75 percent placement rate on average and an 85 percent retention rate.”
Approximately 7,000 job seekers have received at least one service at the FWDB center annually: 400 job seekers received paid work experience, 100 participated in on-the-job training, and 200 seekers received vocational skills classroom training.
These programs have also benefitted local employers as well, “approximately 10 business annually have received rapid response or layoff aversion services” and “approximately 100 businesses have attended workshops” on various topics including: accessing capital, marketing, human relations, and more.
Item 4 on Monday’s agenda adopted salary resolutions for non-represented employee groups, in order to align city compensation rates with the labor market and also balance rates between the city’s represented and non-represented workers.
It is the city council’s responsibility to establish, via resolutions, the salaries and benefits for any “classifications that are not represented by an employee association or union.”
A year ago, last November, council authorized a 2 percent cost of living increase for the city’s non-represented workers, which will now go into effect via the approved resolutions.
Subsequently, some of the city’s represented bargaining units/unions, such as the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the Pasadena Management Association, and the Laborers International Union of North America, similarly negotiated for cost of living increases “ranging from 2 percent to 3 percent” in 2016.
According to staff’s report, the 2 percent increase is “in line with the Consumer Price Index … which rose by 1.92 percent between September 2015 and September 2016 … Furthermore, a 2 percent increase maintains parity between the city’s represented and non-represented employee groups.”
The cost of living increase went into effect Nov. 14 for all those employees classified with a minimum hourly rate “in excess of $10.50 per hour.” For all classifications with a minimum hourly rate of $10.50 per hour, the rate will be increased to $12, effective July 1, 2017, as is set forth under the city’s new minimum wage ordinance.
The third item approved, related to the city’s workers, established new classifications and salary control rates, particularly for the information technology (IT) and executive assistant employee groups, which were recommended to undergo “comprehensive change.”
The city’s human resources department is responsible for managing classification and compensation plans for the city and, over the past several years, the department has been undergoing a city-wide classification study, which aimed to re-assess the city’s job descriptions, titles, and classifications, for union and non-represented employee groups alike.
Through their actions, the city has now established a series of classifications for the IT category “that are competitive within the labor market and appropriate for the evolving and complex duties conducted by the enterprise IT department.” Not only will the changes align the city’s classifications with the economic market, the reclassifications will also “help with recruitment and retention efforts,” as well.
The actions do not authorize any additional full-time equivalent positions, only existing positions will be reclassified. The human resources department will be responsible for working with other departments to implement changes “as soon as practicable.”
As part of the reclassification, 18 existing classifications from the IT and executive assistant groups will be rendered obsolete – positions include various levels of IT analysts, IT technicians, IT managers, executive secretaries, and more.
According to staff’s report, Item 5 will have an “overall fiscal impact of approximately $50,500 in Fiscal Year 2017” but the changes will create “an additional $1 million in potential for salary growth … over the next three to five years as employees move through the new salary ranges.”
More from News
