Laguna Niguel Negotiations Update: April 12, 2023

Dear OCEA member,

The OCEA Negotiations Team met with the City yesterday, April 11, and we presented our first proposal—officially kicking off 2023 negotiations. The City was led by its spokesperson, Deputy City Manager Justin Martin, and OCEA was led by our spokesperson, OCEA Assistant General Manager Tim Steed. The OCEA Negotiations Team also includes the OCEA Leadership Committee: Tina Dittmar, Steven Antisdel, Kelli Fitzgerald, Edgar Abrenica, Katie Crockett, and John Pham.

While we cannot share the specifics of our proposal due to the confidentiality of the process, we want to share elements of our presentation, which is a true reflection of your collective voice gathered from your completed negotiations surveys, research, and the priorities of Laguna Niguel workers.

Here’s What We Told City Representatives Yesterday:

“The landscape of public sector work has fundamentally changed. We need to adapt to this new reality to remain competitive.”

“We know that the typical Laguna Niguel worker is hardly 'typical,' we do more with less to uphold the quality of life in Laguna Niguel.”

We made clear that OCEA workers face rising prices for nearly every necessity, how Laguna Niguel workers are understaffed, and continue to do more work with fewer resources.

Our team detailed the inflationary pressures our members face. Conservatively, OCEA members have fallen behind 11.1% even with our previous wage increases! Our team made it clear this impacts the City’s ability to recruit and retain top talent.

The City is in a healthy financial condition, with higher than recommended reserves. The City has pre-funded it’s pension obligations by $1million and has benefitted from healthy property tax revenue.

This year negotiations provide the opportunity: for fair and equitable adjustments to wages, benefits, and working conditions; to provide part-time workers with rights and benefits reflecting their contributions; to meet the dramatic surge in living costs; to reduce the healthcare cost burden on workers; and to provide genuine relief from increased workload and understaffing. Our goal is to secure a comprehensive agreement for OCEA’s bargaining units that places a premium on economic fairness, improving worker rights and protections, and improved work-life balance for OCEA-represented workers.

Next Steps

The City will take our initial proposal into closed session on Tuesday, April 18. We anticipate the City Council will provide direction to Justin Martin and his team. We have scheduled our next meeting with the City for Thursday, April 20. At this meeting we should receive a response to our initial proposal and a counter proposal from the City. This should initiate the typical exchange of proposals and ideas that we hope will culminate in a tentative agreement. Once reached, the tentative agreement will be presented to the membership for ratification. You can view a brief training on this process here.

You can also read more Frequently Asked Questions here.

Our team will send out an update after each negotiations session. If you know someone who needs to sign up to receive OCEA emails, they can sign up at the OCEA website! To opt-in to text messages, text the word LNOCEA to the number 43506.

Stay tuned for more updates.

In Solidarity,

OCEA

Publication Date: April 12, 2023