AgdaPkt 2006-09-25 - Laserfiche WebLink

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7A Page 2 SALARIES AND BENEFITS With respect to salaries and benefits, staffs initial recommendation was to require proposers to pay "competitive salaries and benefits," but left it up to the proposers to explain and demonstrate in their proposals that they will pay competitive salaries and benefits. It is our belief that it is best not to insert the SBWMA or the franchising agencies too deeply into the labor-management relations process, but instead provide broad but clear policy direction to the proposers. At the August 28 Council meeting, several Council members expressed a desire for more specificity around the issue of wage and benefits. Local No. 350 has requested that the request for proposal (RFP) contain a requirement that proposers must agree to pay "prevailing wages:' Prevailing wages are calculated by the State of California for many classifications, but are not routinely calculated for waste collectors or drivers in San Mateo County. In the absence of a state-calculated prevailing wage, Local 350 proposes that the SBWMA would be responsible for defining and calculating a prevailing wage for the affected positions. This was a responsibility that the SBWMA Process and Contracts Committee was reluctant to recommend to the SBWMA Board due to potential contentiousness and cost associated with this. An alternative that came out of the subcommittee meeting is for the RFP to specify that wages and benefits must fall within a range of current labor contracts in the nine Bay Area county region. Staff believes that this is a workable alternative that can be accomplished without substantial cost and that is not overly restrictive on proposers. WORKER RETENTION There may be fewer driver and collection-related positions under the new franchise agreement as automated or semi-automated collection service is being requested, despite going from biweekly to weekly recyclables and yard waste collection. Also, should there be a change in the collection operator the question arises as to how existing workers would be retained by the new operator. Our initial recommendation was for a new operator to provide employment preference to existing employees and for the proposers to explain the method or procedure for retaining current employees (e.g., check for proper licensing, review of DMV records and drug screening). Local No. 350 has requested more certain language concerning employee retention. Specifically, they are requesting that the collection contractor offer employment to all displaced workers who have been employed by the current coltection contractor for at least 120 days prior to the expiration of the current contract and that the collection contractor must retain these employees for at least 90 days after the start of the new contract After the expiration of this 90 day period the contractor will then use worker seniority as the basis for discharging any workers not needed. We are retaining our initial recommendation as we believe that the language requested by Local No. 350 might prove too restrictive. The overarching objective behind staffs positions on these two items is to provide a