By Zachary K. Johnson
Record Net
STOCKTON — County officials forced contract terms on correctional officers from the San Joaquin County Jail on Tuesday, following more than a year of negotiations that failed to reach a new employment agreement.
The terms include officers picking up a larger share of the cost of providing heath care and retirement benefits. These concessions are what county officials called some of the “key pillars” for keeping the county in good fiscal shape. The terms and the imposition of them is fair, officials said, since almost every other county employee had accepted them during negotiations in the lean years following the Great Recession.
But the correctional officers said the unilateral imposition of a 2 percent pay cut and other contract changes are harsher than those agreed to by other groups and are anything but fair for a group of workers who had already suffered layoffs as well as making sacrifices in a 2010 contract extension.
Full story: S.J. imposes contract on corrections officers