While the DDN tells us about the parking issues:

The streets around the AFSCME Council 8 union hall on Gate Street looked like a municipal parking lot this morning as members of Dayton Local 101 jockeyed to park their city-owned, rigs and pick-up trucks, then spent half-an-hour hearing the terms of a tentative labor agreement.

via Dayton city workers hear details of proposed agreement.

I’ll share with you the details of the 9-page “City of Dayton Memorandum of Understanding”.

“Whereas” the city continues to sound like some self-righteous pontificator of legalese instead of a willing team player trying to work things out to the benefit of all. (They start with four “Whereases” and one “Now Therefore”) Do we don white wigs and sign with a quill and inkwell?

• The City wants AFSCME to drop the agreed 3% increase in pay for 2009, remove any kind of wage linkage with other union contracts (IAFF, FOP and BTC).
• The City will also continue with proposed part-time conversion of 22 positions in Facilities Management and eliminate 2 positions in that area.
• The City will not convert 10 Street Maintenance workers to part time- but will transfer 2 senior laborers positions- to Division of Housing Inspection in the Department of Building Services.
• The City will continue with its plan to join in the consolidated central dispatch center which will eliminate the dispatch center positions from the City payroll.
• The City is asking for everyone to take 4 days of unpaid “Cost savings” days next year- as long as they don’t result in overtime.
• The City agrees not to lay off or abolish any other jobs that are filled- or emptied by termination, resignation or retirement.
• No more conversions from full time to part time.
• Agrees to maintain current benefits.
• This is a onetime deal- and not to be used in any future discussions. In other words- this is final if accepted, through May 21, 2010.

The details of this renegotiation should be public- there is no point to secrecy.

The question is really is AFSCME willing to be part of the solution- or continue to work in the traditional confrontational mode?

The City really didn’t offer a lot of carrots with this deal, suggesting a strong-arm approach, however, because of the complexity of the contracts it’s difficult to really work toward a contract that puts the people of Dayton first. The formalized structure of narrowly defined union positions probably stops a lot of really talented people from performing at their peak.

There are many ways we could save money- however they may require a whole different way of looking at our staffing. Right now, we probably don’t have time or cushion to tackle that.

It will be interesting to hear how AFSCME votes.

[UPDATE] 8 APRIL The union accepted the proposed cuts : http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2009/04/07/ddn040709unionweb.html