Our Union had another strong day before the arbitrator on the fourth day of our interest arbitration hearing with the State.
Witnesses on both sides provided their analysis of the classification and compensation studies in extensive testimony yesterday.
Our expert Carla Pusateri, a retired Deputy Fire Marshall and former Union President with eighteen years of experience in salary survey work, testified on behalf of Teamsters 117. Ms. Pusateri exposed the compensation gap between our members and those who perform comparable work in similar jurisdictions. She made a strong argument for the targeted range increases we are requesting.
The State's expert, Kerri Parker, a Classification and Compensation Specialist from the Office of Financial Management, was much less convincing. She admitted that the State had not requested information from her while we were in mediation. In bargaining, the State's lead negotiator repeatedly told us they were working on analyzing the range increases the Union requested. Ms. Parker's testimony contradicted what the State had explicitly told us during negotiations.
Ms. Parker's testimony is significant because the State claimed they did not have the data to justify our requested pay increases. As it turns out, this was not true. According to their own witness, if the State had asked her for the information, she could have easily provided it; they just refused to ask for it.
As you can imagine, when this was revealed during cross-examination of the State's witness, members of our negotiation team who were viewing the proceedings were highly frustrated. They had waited for four days in mediation for information that was readily available but never given.
Here, you can watch a short video recap of the day from members Jesse Reese (CO2, SCCC) and Gregg Peterson (CO2, SCCC).
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