San Mateo County agrees to pay increases in new contract with SEIU

By the Daily Post staff

SEIU Local 521 and the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors have reached an agreement on a three-year contract for 1,453 employees in various county departments that calls for raises of 3% to 4% a year.

In addition, employees will get raises based on the number of years they’ve worked for the county — a 1% bump after five years, 2.5% after 10, 4% after 20, and 6% at 25.

The new contract also gives the employees two paid “Winter Recess” days that can be taken between Christmas and New Year’s Day every year.

And, speaking of holidays, the contract continues the tradition of giving workers 12 paid holidays a year, but Columbus Day was renamed in the agreement as “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

Those covered under the contract include librarians, engineers, appraisers, accountants and accountants, among others.

The new contract will raise the county’s $846 million annual payroll by $37 million over the three-year length of the deal. But the county said it will only raise the county’s pension liability by 0.04%.

The SEIU contract covers about a quarter of the county’s 5,668 full-time employees. The median pay for the 5,668 employees is $88,680 a year, according to Transparent California, a website that keeps track of government compensation. With benefits, the median cost of a county employee increases to $126,563.

In the first year of the SEIU agreement, each employee will get a 3% cost-of-living (COLA) raise and a 1% “equity” raise. In the second year, the two raises will be the same percentages. In the third year (October 2020 to October 2021), the equity raise will remain 1%, but the COLA will range from 3% to 4%.