Aug. 06--Los Angeles city officials have reached a tentative contract agreement with the unions representing more than half the city's civilian workforce, bringing within reach a conclusion to a more than a year of tense bargaining and sharp rhetoric over public-employee pay.
The deal -- which must still be ratified through votes by the City Council and union members -- holds the line against higher city spending in key areas, deferring city workers' raises and taking strides toward cost-saving pension reforms.
In other places, labor leaders won concessions that Mayor Eric Garcetti had for a long time resisted, such as the preservation of healthcare plans that require no premium payments from many members and workers' compensation rules that critics say encourage abuse of the system.
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On Wednesday afternoon, leaders from the member organizations of the Coalition of L.A. City Unions voted to recommend ratification of the tentative contract. If approved by the City Council and union members, the agreement with the Coalition of L.A. City Unions would bring to an end the intensive employee contract talks that have continued through much of Mayor Eric Garcetti's first two years in office.
The coalition is the only prominent labor group with which Garcetti has not yet renegotiated a contract since taking office in 2013.
"We're labor, and it's time for us to get back to work," said Rafe Garcia, a member of the bargaining team for Service Employees International Union Local 721, the coalition's largest union. Garcia called the deal an "honorable" one for union members, and said the vote to recommend ratification was near-unanimous.
Sources familiar with the tentative, four-year contract said it would freeze raises for three years, with a 2% raise in the final year. It keeps in place existing pension plans for existing employees while reducing the retirement benefits available to new hires, a move city officials have described as a key step toward restoring the city's long-term financial stability.
However, under the new contract many city employees will continue to pay none of their healthcare premiums. Garcetti had sought to require workers to pay 10% of those premiums.
And rather than reducing the percentage of full salary that workers can collect while on leave because of injury -- a reform the mayor's office had sought in response to Times reports on alleged abuses of the system -- the city and unions will form working groups on addressing the problem.
Coalition unions' contracts expired in June of last year. The new contract would extend through June 2018.
peter.jamison@latimes.com
