[Editor's Note: The Grant County Commission held a work session on Dec. 12, 2023. This part 5 continues the Dec 14, 2023 regular meeting agenda review and decisions made. It covers public input at the regular meeting. ]
By Mary Alice Murphy
At the Grant County Commission regular meeting on Dec. 14, 202, several individuals gave public input. The first ones to approach the podium were Jake Benavidez and Sean Carrasco, the president and vice president of the local AFSCME Council 18 (American Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees) union.
Benavidez said he would speak on the current state of negotiations and what is going on right now. "We've been waiting for a couple of years to get this negotiation started. Things like Covid got in the way. Now we are started. We are officially in arbitration with the county on wages, overtime, terms of the agreement, disciplinary action and holidays. Our biggest concern is to get arbitration completed, so we can get the wages for all our employees. Right now, the new pay scale only affects new hires and probationary employees. Employees are feeling left out, because they didn't get the new pay scale. Right now, we are in a stalemate with the county. The Public Employee Relations Labor Board of New Mexico states the parties have a 30-day window, including the arbitrator we selected, to render a final and binding decision. We members of the union agreed to the dates the arbitrator chose in December, but right now the response we got from the county lawyer is that they will not be able to do anything until February. For us that's a huge concern. We want to get this contract done for our employees. There's a huge pay raise on the line for all our employees and much deserved and needed for everybody. And all our other articles as well. I've talked to other departments and morale is low and there's a lot of divide in the county between union and non-union. We feel it will be best resolved by completing the arbitration. A lot hangs in the balance, so we hope you take that into consideration as well. Thanks for listening to us."
The next speaker, Jay Urbaniak, apologized to the commissioners for "having to keep hearing from us again and again. There's two sides to every story. I don't disagree about what they are saying about morale, with what's going on. But you've got to lay the blame where it needs to be, I think. I sent this out, in a newsletter, which the union never does to keep everyone informed about what's going on about the decertification process. It's been two months since we filed the decertification petition. AFSCME has repeatedly attempted to delay the proceedings. First, they said the county had decided to organize the decertification or that there was management interference. When pushed by the Public Employee Labor Relations Board, they could not provide any evidence that the county was behind the decertification petition. Then the union argued that we didn't get enough signatures to trigger an election, claiming there were 107 employees in the bargaining unit when there are only 63. But again, Council 18 could not support its argument with evidence, and the Public Employee Labor Relations Board concluded we had submitted plenty of signatures to move forward. We proposed to hold the election electronically on Jan. 3 and 4, AFSCME, only 20 minutes after the hearing, backtracked and said the election should happen in person even though the PELRB indicated we would have to wait weeks or even months before we could have a vote. It looks like we are moving forward with the electronic election anyway. If you look at the employee handbooks for the union and non-union employees, they are about the same. They match, so I don't know what the argument is about. It's been about three years and it has an impact on employees. I don't know where this goes, but I just wanted everyone to know the truth that it is not one-sided."
He told a story about two donkeys being led through a village. One donkey is loaded down with bales of cotton and the other with heavy sacks of sugar. They move down the trail. By lunchtime, the donkey with the bags of sugar is thinking he's not going to make it, because his knees are wobbling. He sees the donkey with the cotton, which isn't as heavy, and he is grabbing nibbles of grass and still had pep in his step. Ahead of them is a rain-swollen river and the donkey with the heavy load thinks: "Well, this is it. I'm going to drown." He pushed himself into the river and found himself making it to the other side The sugar had melted and the cotton had filled with water and bye-bye donkey.
"Some of us in this county are working," Jay continued. "We wake up every morning and know what we have to do to make this county look good. So this situation with the union makes the county look bad. Everyone knows the value of the unions in the early 20th Century. They afforded dignity to the employees. But everyone should know that there is abuse. They protected the ones who didn't want to work or didn't want to follow rules or were insubordinate. The ones with the light load are in positions of oversight, so it's like the prisoners being in charge of the prison. I'm know I'm speaking of some of those folks behind me, but we want to work with our employer without the union, because we don't need it any more. The contract is the same. I think we can do that and be happy and we can get the wage increases we need. I just wanted to say that there are two sides to the story. Thank you."
The next public input came from Toby (last name unintelligible). "I'm the senior mechanic for Grant County. I've been with the county for 29 years, so I've seen a lot that goes on. I'm disgusted with the way the settlement of this contract has been dealt with so far. It has been delayed over and over. A pay raise is long overdue, and I don't understand why the county can't pay its employees better. Especially after it just purchased several police units; the maintenance department just purchased a new backhoe, a tractor along with a new truck and utility van. The airport has a new truck. The Road Department is going to lease Caterpillar graders and have Caterpillar do the maintenance on them. Also, it is contracting out the hauling of dirt when the Road Department is able to do this. In my 29 years, I've seen the county work with the union to reach an agreement even when the county was not financially stable. That is not the case this time. I don't remember what year it was when the county was in the red and had to lay off workers. I was the second to last to be laid off. The ones who weren't laid off had to go on a 32-hour work week until the county could get back on its feet, which took over a year. We sacrificed to help the county. It's unfortunate the county doesn't resolve this. Another thing that isn't right is that new hires are making more than their senior co-workers. Management is bringing them in at the new pay scale that was determined by the study, which was to fix this as the county should. But what justifies giving it to the new employees and not your senior employees? None of this does any good for morale. Thank you."
The last public input came from Cesar Torres. He said he heard people saying that the union is taking forever. "So's the county. There are two sides to the story. For me, the union is there to protect us especially for new positions that come open. Possibly we have the buddy-buddy system going on. The union is there to protect the people who have been trained for these positions., and to improve and promote to get hired for these positions. It's affecting a lot of people in every department seeing some getting raises. It's causing morale issues, because they are seeing these new employees getting huge raises, and even though they are putting very little time into it, some are already higher than us. I'm a corporal right now making less than some of the deputies, even the ones that just came in. They are making a lot more than I am. It puts a burden on us because we are having to work more overtime so we can make the same wages they do. It takes me away from my family. We're just asking you to come to an agreement on this. There's one side and there's the other side - two sides to the story. Thank you."
The next article will begin with the presentations at the regular meeting.
To read the prior articles, please visit https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/81832-grant-county-commission-held-work-session-121223-part-1 ;https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/81852-grant-county-commission-held-work-session-121223-part-2; https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/81868-grant-county-commission-held-work-session-121223-part-3; and https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/81909-grant-county-commission-held-work-session-121223-and-regular-meeting-121423-part-4 .