Unions representing City and Civil Service employees are set to picket St. Louis City Hall and Mayor Francis G. Slay on Friday to protest their members (and all 5,000 City workers) not having a pay plan – and what they describe as the mayor’s interfering with the bargaining process.
According to documents obtained by the American, locals affiliated with IBEW, Pipefitters, IAFF, IUOE, Painters, AFSCME, Teamsters and Carpenters are all incensed over the mayor’s handling of the pay plan and will picket City Hall on Friday.
The unions are also holding Slay accountable for promises made in encouraging the passage of the recent half-cent sales tax increase, which the unions say the mayor has broken by not honoring promised pay raises and merit-based incentives.
In a June 27 letter to the Civil Service Commission, the Carpenters’ legal counsel, Charles W. Bobinette, said the Carpenters union had been “assured by the public and private statements of Mayor Slay” that “monies would be available for long-awaited cost of living and merit increases on the passage of the sales tax.”
In a letter last week, Personnel Director Richard Frank asked union reps to return to the negotiating table and possibly tweak a previously negotiated agreement. This move comes after weeks of finger-pointing and excuse-making at City Hall surrounding the employee pay plan – or, more precisely, the lack thereof.
Indeed, the Mayor’s Office seems to be spending more time spreading the blame than resolving the dispute.
Initially, some union reps reportedly acting in concert with the mayor told Aldermanic President Lewis Reed that the Carpenters union was blaming Reed, not the mayor, for the broken promise.
A meeting was summoned between union and aldermanic officials, at which Reed pointed out that he and Comptroller Darlene Green had in fact been bypassed in the negotiation process for the pay plan. Two-thirds of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment (Reed and Green) did not see the pay plan agreement until after the flap erupted because a pay raise and incentives had been negotiated by Frank that the City then admitted it can not afford.
Slay’s substitute pay bill (a one-year plan) was voted out of the Civil Service Commission on June 13. The originally negotiated, more-lucrative pay bill (a three-year plan) was not received by Reed until June 30.
JoAnn Williams, business representative for the Carpenters union, said the rumor about her union blaming Reed was only divide-and-rule tactics intended to disorganize union solidarity.
“The president of the Board of Alderman played no role in this fiasco,” Williams said. “The mayor and his staff dropped the ball.”
Apparently continuing the time-honored blame game of “hide the ball” while City employees grew increasingly restless, Slay and his surrogates next shifted the blame to 14th Ward Alderman Stephen M. Gregali.
Normally a close Slay ally, Gregali hollered in surprise and pain that he had been fingered, calling it “only rumor-mongering in City Hall” and accusing the American of being suckered in by a Slay diversionary tactic in a previous staff report.
Gregali said, “The fact is that Rick Frank and Linda Thomas negotiated a compensation plan that they had no authority to negotiate. They led the unions and City employees down a primrose path, only to let it fall in the lap of the mayor.”
With that version of events, Gregali is shifting the blame onto Frank and Thomas, deputy director of Personnel – and keeping it off the mayor.
Leaders of the Firefighters Institute for Racial Equality have long claimed that Frank works closely with Slay and Rainford. They claim the mayor uses Frank – and the very loosely and widely defined powers of the director of Personnel – to manipulate City and Civil Service departments and employees.
The unions, however, are convinced they have caught the mayor in a lie – and possibly an actionable error. They say Gregali was initially used to cover it up, but he was caught in the act.
“Gregali tried to pawn off a pay plan written by the Mayor’s Office for the much more lucrative version negotiated by the unions and Frank, as provided by State law,” said a source in one of the unions planning a picket on Friday.
“The unions went ballistic, and the substitute was tabled.”
The American has obtained a document from the law firm representing a handful of locals affiliated with IBEW, Pipefitters, IAFF, IUOE, Painters, AFSCME, Teamsters and the Carpenters in which the unions’ legal counsel does indeed “go ballistic.”
After a blow-by-blow account of negotiations with Frank in late May, the unions’ counsel Sally E. Barker informs Franks and the Civil Service commissioners that “the Commission’s presentation of the bill to the Board (of Aldermen) must reflect the results of the collective bargaining process.”
Now the table seems set for labor unrest at City Hall. Even Firefighters Local 73 officials are calling for Slay’s head in private meetings. F.I.R.E. and Local 73 may soon find themselves in an odd position – on the same side of a fight against Francis Slay, Jeff Rainford and Richard Frank.
F.I.R.E. has long maintained that Slay, Rainford, Frank and Slay’s cousin Sam Simon, then-director of Public Safety, worked closely with Local 73 to undermine then-Fire Chief Sherman George and drive him out of the fire service.
