Sacramento, CA - On Saturday, March 26, Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) negotiations team met with representatives from SEIU to discuss our proposal to increase compensation for SEIU-represented employees. The district’s proposal includes the following increases in compensation for SEIU-represented employees:

• 2% ongoing salary increase, effective July 1, 2022
• $1,000 one-time stipend for 2020-21
• $1,500 one-time stipend for 2021-22
• $1,000 one-time stipend for 2022-23
• $2,000 Recruitment and Signing Bonus for new bus drivers who complete the SCUSD training program for bus drivers for the 2022-23 school year.
• $2,000 Recruitment and Signing Bonus for SEIU members who refer a new bus driver who provides service to the district in the 2022-23 school year.
• $5,000 signing bonus for new bus driver employees who are fully licensed to drive a bus. In order to receive the signing bonus, the employee must provide service to the District for the entire 2022-23 school year. 

After the negotiations session, SEIU shared it’s counter proposal as follows:

“SEIU Local 1021 seeks equity and social justice for all classified workers recognized by the District having lower paying salaries. To that end SEIU proposes improvements in a total overall economic package that meets or exceeds the agreement with SCTA.”

By offering equal dollar amount stipends to all SEIU-represented employees, instead of percentage-based stipends, we are recognizing the needs of our lower paid employees. These stipends reflect our commitment to equity and social justice. They offer our lower paid hourly employees significantly more money than what they would receive from a stipend based on 2% of their annual salary, which is what has been proposed to SCTA.

The district’s negotiations team has asked SEIU to please clarify the improvements it wants in the overall economic package in the contract and the equity changes they are proposing. The District’s negotiations team has agreed to resume negotiations with SEIU’s bargaining team again on Sunday, at 10:00 a.m.

Also on Saturday, March 26, the district’s negotiations team received a counterproposal from SCTA in response to the proposals that the district passed to SCTA on Monday, March 21 (read the proposal here), and on Tuesday, March 22 (read this proposal here).

“We are glad that SCTA shared its counterproposal today,” said Jorge A. Aguilar, Superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District. “This is a productive step forward. We remain committed to continuing good faith negotiations with SCTA to reach agreement on COVID-related issues and our successor contract. We urge SCTA to call off the strike so our students can return to school on Monday. Kids need to be in school and we need to work together at the negotiating table.” 

The district is reviewing SCTA’s counterproposal and expects to meet with SCTA on Sunday.

We will continue to update our community, and will share the district’s counterproposal that we hope finalizes our negotiations so that Sac City Unified students can return to school on Monday.

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