November 2011

SEBA President
Laren Leichliter

Negotiations

There have been many questions about how SEBA does negotiations with the County when it is time. As most of you know, SEBA is in negotiations with the County right now for the Specialized Peace Officer Unit as well as just starting negotiations for the Safety Unit.

I have been asked several times why does SEBA negotiate with the County without an attorney. I would like to take this opportunity to answer that question for everyone. There is always an attorney from our law firm of Silver, Hadden, Silver, Wexler & Levine at the table with the negotiating team when they meet with the County. The next question I get is why SEBA has a negotiation team from the Unit that is in negotiations. The answer to this question is that the team is there to help the attorney with the items that are of interest to the specific bargaining unit that is in negotiations with the County. The members that make up the negotiation team are from the Unit they represent and are also the SEBA Board members that were voted in by the members they represent. This is to insure that member concerns will be passed to the negotiation team and then passed to the attorney during the negotiation process.

I know that sometimes it seems like many items are not brought up during the negotiation process but that could not be any further from the truth. Many items are discussed during the negotiation process that never makes it to the offer that goes to the membership. There are several reasons for this occurring, which may include but not limited to, they may not be appropriate to be addressed at the time of negotiations or they may have been not as important in whole as another issue that was left on the final offer. These are only a couple of reasons, but not the only ones for why this happens. The negotiation process is normally done over several months and many issues on both sides are addressed but not always on the final offer. I hope this assists the membership in understanding how the process is done.

As always, be safe out there.