Business Manager Chris Darker

Monday, February 15, 2010

Local 792 Business Manager Nominated for CLC President

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

REDDING - Business Manager Chris Darker was nominated for President of the Five Counties Central Labor Council on January 26th. Business Manager Darker has served as Vice President of the CLC since 2010 and the current President is retiring after three decades of involvement in the CLC. UPEC has been a member of the CLC since 1996 and Darker has been a delegate to the CLC since that time. The vote for new CLC officers will be on Thursday, February 23rd.

UPEC Files Unfair Labor Practice Charges

Monday, January 30, 2012

ALTURAS - Modoc Medical Center Administration continues to violate labor laws under California Government Code Section 3500. Charges have been filed this week against MMC for interfering with the union, unilateral changes to the bargaining unit, failure to negotiate changes and many more. The union has filed no less than 12 ULP charges against Modoc Medical Center and CEO Monica Derner in the past 4 months. This is more charges than UPEC has filed in five (5) years in thirteen Counties. 

UPEC Wins Unemployment Appeal

Alturas - Senior Labor Relations Representative Dave Ritchie represented an employee at Modoc Medical Center who was terminated in October 2011. The employer denied unemployment benefits. UPEC represents former members in unemployment cases and won an appeal for the employee with EDD. The employee will receive benefits back to October. UPEC is representing the employee in an appeal for their job reinstatement. UPEC is confident that the employee will be returned to work.

Big Top Circus at MMC

Thursday, July 28, 2011

ALTURAS - While Modoc Medical Center continues to rack up violations of the Contract, Labor Law, MMBA, FLSA to name a few negotiations got under way. Of course we missed several deadlines the hospital put in front of us. It all started June 9th when they completed their budget and told us the members had to give up their PERS Retirement because they could only afford 2 more months of payments. There was no written proposal and the hospital just wanted the employees to approve that with nothing in return for saving the hospital over 16% on their PERS bill It takes 5 days to get a meeting notice from the date of mailing to get to the members because the post office takes 5 - 7 days to get a letter to and from Redding and Alturas. On top of that, the members need to meet to discuss their proposals and review the hospital proposals which didn’t include the total domino affect of dropping PERS. To top all this off, the proposal changes depending upon which hospital meeting you went to. The hospital is acting like their financial problem is caused by the employees. They have already gone to the newspaper several times blaming the Union for not meeting their deadlines. In the meantime the hospital continues to violate the MOU at every turn. Then you have the layoffs. Instead of following the contract it becomes a pick and choose who goes instead of seniority. There are employees doing two and three jobs and only getting paid for one. Employees working overtime for free, told they have to work through their breaks and lunches without additional compensation. Of course the hospital believes that is all fine.. 

Darker Elected as AD2 Delegate

Sunday, January 09, 2011

CORNING - Earlier today, I was elected as an Assembly District Delegate (ADD) for Assembly District 2. I join eleven other fellow democrats as delegates elected from the 2nd Assembly District to serve a two year term (2011-2012).

ADD’s attend the annual convention, network with other democrats, represent their constituancy. elect party officers, promote the California Democratic Party agenda, endorse candidates to statewide, legislative and congressional office and vote to endorse resolutions and ballot measures.

For additional information go to http://www.cadem.org

Trucks with Signs

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

REDDING - The campaign to elect 3 new Redding City Council members needs your help! Redding Firefighters have constructed campaign signs for pick-up beds. If you can help by putting a sign in the back of your truck, Redding Firefighters will install it for you Thursday, September 9th at the UPEC Office beginning at noon. If you can’t make it then, email me at and we will set up a day and time. Trucks with signs can be strategically parked and driven around town. Other activities are also planned.

End of Session Report

SACRAMENTO - Although the end of the 2009-2010 Legislative Session brought with it the usual flurry of activity including the cursory late night deals and last minute gut and amends of bills, as there was still no budget deal when the clock struck mid-night on August 31, many in Sacramento felt the session ended with more of a whimper than a bang.

With the Governor off on a trade junket, and the members of the Legislature in various other locations, a budget deal is still weeks away.  High level talks are said to be on-going, but the party-line acrimony and disparity of thought on how best to remedy California’s 20 billion dollar budget crisis means there is still a long row to hoe before a deal is struck.

The one bit of good news on the budget front is that the deal for the Courts has been struck and we have every reason to believe that sufficient money will be allocated so as to avoid any AOC mandated court closure days.

Unfortunately, all of the rest of the news appears to be bad.  As the Republicans continue to refuse to entertain the possibility of new or enhanced revenue streams, the Democrats are left to choose between draconian cuts to social services, public health, schools, transportation, public safety and every other program which employs and benefits the people of California.  While we don’t know what the final deal is yet, we do know it won’t be pretty.

Adding to the budgetary dilemma is the imminent Supreme Court decision regarding state worker furlough days.  If the decision is in the employee’s favor the 20 months of furlough days could wind up adding an additional $3 billion to the amount the state is in the red.

In Legislative news, we scored a major victory and ensured that our county transportation department employees will continue to be able to do road maintenance work when AB 1409 (Perez) (which would have imposed severe limits on the ability of county transportation departments to use their employees for such work) died at the end of session.  While we anticipate another attempt being made next year rest assured we will be ready to fight off this and any other attempts at taking work from our members.

Other bills which were of interest to us this year were:

AB 1651 by De La Torre which seeks to ensure that teachers, fire fighters and public safety personnel are not penalized in their final pension calculations because they are furloughed by employers.  This bill is currently enrolled to the Governor.

AB 1749 by Lowenthal provides the same whistleblower protections to court employees are currently afforded other public employees.  The Governor signed this bill on August 18.  Another bill, AB 2521 by Torrico would have required independent auditing of the courts and the AOC.  While AB 2521 did not make it’s way through the legislative process this session, the subject matter of the bill will be included in the Court’s budget trailer bill once the budget is finalized.

AB 2486 by Feuer, also signed by the Governor on August 18 enacted the “Teen Alcohol Safety Act of 2010” thanks in large part to the work of our own Steve and Debbie Allen.  The bill imposes social host liability on adults who knowingly provide alcohol to minors where the minors are subsequently injured or killed as a result of the alcohol.  This bill, along with a companion bill which would exempt minors from liability where they call 911 on behalf of an intoxicated friend (AB 1999 by Portantino—currently awaiting signature) will go a long way towards saving lives.

The big pension bills this year were: AB 194 by Torrico which limits the amount of salary or pay rate a member of a public retirement system may include for the purpose of determining a retirement benefit to 125% of the Governor’s current recommended salary.  This bill is currently awaiting the Governor’s signature.  Additionally, AB 1987 by Ma and SB 1425 by Simitian, both of which are awaiting the Governor’s signature, and both of which seek to establish minimum standards and requirements for all public retirement systems in California with respect to final compensation, ongoing audits with penalties for noncompliance, and prohibitions against a retiree from immediately returning to employment with the public employer on a part-time or contract basis.

Report written by UPEC Local 792 Legislative Advocate Libby Sanchez

Stewards Needed for SCGU

Sunday, February 28, 2010

It has been a while since we recruited for Stewards in the SCGU. I believe we have addressed as much communication issues as we can at this point. The County still refuses to allow Union Staff to send unit emails through the County email and we have few personal emails of our members. Timely Communication is important to our success. I will be scheduling a Steward information lunch for those who are interested in getting information on the duties of our stewards and answer any questions in general. If you are interested in finding out more, please call Pattti Wyatt at the union office to sign up for the informational meeting.

Board Receives Proposal from SCGU

Friday, February 26, 2010

Dear Shasta Members,
Shasta County Admin was a little upset with our staff last Tuesday over our presentation. Seems they wanted to meet and confer rather than have us respond to the concession request made by them back in October 2009.  Naturally the Board did not response to our letter in open session. This is normal operating procedure. I did get a phone call from Shasta County Support Services Director Michelle Schafer at 10:30 am Tuesday morning requesting to “start negotiations” on Wednesday, March 3rd. I said I would meet her at 9:00 am. Always open to listen to management which is all we can do at this meeting. On Wednesday, I received a followup report that the Board did not reject the concession offer made by the General Unit so my guess is that they would like us to agree to additional cuts. (NOTE: I will not agree to additional cuts not authorized by our members so that will have to come in the future if at all). I will be selecting a bargaining team and alternates on those who signed up last Monday. I appreciate the volunteers. See you all Monday the 1st and Bargaining Team volunteers on Tuesday the 2nd.