Why are MAAC employees on strike?

Staff of a Chula Vista-based nonprofit providing social providers that assist households turn out to be self-sufficient walked off the job Monday to protest failed negotiations over a brand new, three-year contract.

About 250 individuals employed by Metropolitan Space Advisory Committee, or MAAC, shaped picket traces in South County and North County, chanting “simply be honest” and holding indicators that learn “honest wages now.”

The group has greater than 500 employees and about 300 are members of SEIU Native 221. Staff work as drug and alcohol counselors, upkeep employees, household providers workers, lecturers, kitchen aides and bus drivers. Throughout San Diego County, they supply a variety of providers, together with early childhood improvement, inexpensive housing, restoration properties, job search, immigration and training at its constitution college open to college students between the ages of 14 and 24.

On Could 19, union members unanimously approved Monday’s strike, which resulted within the closure of greater than a dozen of its childhood improvement facilities. They stated they took the motion after 27 unsuccessful bargaining classes over the previous eight months. Organizers stated unionized employees have filed 5 Unfair Labor Follow fees — two for employee intimidation and three associated to unhealthy religion bargaining.

Union members stated they need honest wages for all, a system that rewards these with seniority and provides employees room for progress. They’re calling for an agency-wide minimal wage enhance from $15 to $18 an hour, which MAAC has agreed to, however union members say the group is refusing to compensate these with extra expertise.

Lily Camarena, who has labored with MAAC for 19 years, stated the group’s supply will worsen retention and doesn’t tackle pay inequities.

“What this (proposal) would do is that, if I used to be an affiliate trainer, the entry-level positions are going to make the identical as me as a result of affiliate lecturers don’t make $18 but. They might convey them as much as $18 and entry-level positions, too, though affiliate lecturers have lots of expertise underneath their belt,” she stated.

Union members need the corporate to “restart a step enhance system,” stated Alisa Miller, representing Native 221. “Yearly in your anniversary, you progress up a step and that lets you develop in your profession, and as new individuals are available in, they’re introduced at a decrease charge and so they get to maneuver up. That’s been frozen for a minimum of 10 years. We would like that again so we don’t have this fixed turnover.”

MAAC President Arnulfo Manriquez stated the group’s supply is “a powerful bundle” that retains up with inflation, however can’t give extra as a result of it has fastened quantities of funding from authorities sources for its applications.

“We’re caught,” he stated. “It’s not like we are able to exit and promote extra of one thing to make more cash. We nonetheless have to offer the identical providers. There’s no place the place further cash can come from.”

MAAC operates based mostly on funding that’s in place, he stated. The nonprofit’s fiscal 2022 price range consists of $52.2 million in working bills, of which $26 million goes towards salaries and wages. The price range has $52.3 million in revenues, leaving a surplus of almost $103,000.

A companywide letter from Manriquez in Could learn that MAAC’s proposed supply to union members was value $7 million over three years. Union members stated Monday that MAAC had initially miscalculated its whole and that it’s now about $5 million.

Manriquez declined to substantiate the sum of the nonprofit’s supply, however stated it “is the most important we’ve ever finished in our historical past” and that “we don’t have the assets to do one thing as massive as $7 million.”

He declined to share the entire value of their supply and stated, “we might by no means do any sort of regressive bargaining.” Manriquez as a substitute highlighted the nonprofit’s allocation of $3.5 million in a federal Paycheck Safety Program mortgage in the course of the pandemic, which is used on its employees in order that none needed to be laid off.

Camarena stated she fears extra individuals stop their jobs at MAAC, which at the moment has about 50 openings, in accordance with its web site.

“Persons are going to different businesses or they’re going into the quick meals business as a result of they’re providing an entire lot extra,” she stated. “It’s unhappy that we, the employees, can nonetheless qualify for the providers that we offer. It’s ironic.”

In reaching a stalemate, the nonprofit will search help from a mediator, stated Manriquez.