UPE members in the 005 and 008 Bargaining Units constitute around 3,000 Sacramento County employees. All are working without a contract due to Sacramento County's refusal to offer them a fair and livable contract that includes reasonable raises. Currently, the County is proposing a number of takeaways that will hurt UPE members.

• The County proposes to remove our current contract language which states: "any changes to health care must be mutually agreed upon." UPE is not opposed to changes if they make healthcare more affordable for our members, but the County wants the ability to make unilateral changes to healthcare plans, which could raise the employees' costs with no livable raises to offset these costs.
• The County proposes making it easier to outsource our members' work.  The Sacramento County Charter allows for the contracting out of services for purposes of ‘economy and efficiency’ under Section 71-J. The Charter also requires that before any contracting out occurs, the County must meet and confer with the Union. The County's proposal wants to carve out certain circumstances where they bypass the meet and confer process and go straight to the Board of Supervisors to approve the contract.
• The County's proposals would remove the following family members currently covered under family death leave: Great Grandparent, Great Grandchild, and Any child or close relative who resided with the employee at the time of death.  The County does not have a justification for removing these family members other than CA state law does not cover them. However, the law only sets a minimum for coverage, and there is no legal reason why the County cannot continue to allow these family members to be included.
• The County proposes to eliminate current contract language that requires the County to meet and confer with UPE before taking proposed changes to classifications and classification specifications for approval by the Civil Service Commission. Under the proposal, the County would be able to proceed with these changes 30 days after noticing UPE before any meet and confer process concluded. This severely undermines our collective bargaining rights.  The County proposal also eliminates a requirement that the County meet with UPE regarding salary associated with any classification changes. Removing this makes it harder for UPE to advocate for more money for our members when the County changes classifications.
• The County proposes to add a no strike clause that will limit our members' ability to strike on Unfair Labor Practices committed by the County and limit our ability to support other bargaining units with sympathy strikes.