San Diego city lifeguards will cast their vote via secret ballot Aug. 1 to determine whether a majority wants to stay with the San Diego Municipal Employees Association (MEA) union or join the local 911 Teamsters. But some lifeguards said MEA members sent letters saying their newest negotiated contract would end if they voted to leave the union. “In the [e-mail, the attorney says] we would absolutely lose our contract that we are in, but there\u2019s no law supporting that,” said Lifeguard Sgt. Ed Harris. “In fact, there are laws to the opposite of that.” Harris and other lifeguards began lobbying months ago for the opportunity to leave the MEA \u2014 the union that represents lifeguards in addition to other city workers \u2014 in order to join the local 911 Teamsters. According to Harrris, joining the Teamsters would allow lifeguards more individual representation. So lifeguards asked city council members to approve an election. “The council gave us the right to choose,” Harris said. “We\u2019re really confident the council wouldn\u2019t penalize us for choosing in either direction.” Harris said city officials told attorneys for the Teamsters that they would not penalize lifeguards and that renegotiating contracts for 100 employees was not fiscally sound. But in an MEA e-mail sent to all lifeguards, an attorney for the organization told the group they may lose a two-year contract. “The MEA is using this to put doubt in the minds of lifeguards,” Harris said. “What they haven\u2019t done in the 10-month process is tell us what they would do better or how they would represent us better. What they have done is try to stop the vote from taking place.” The July 20 electronic e-mail, titled “What happens to MEA\u2019s 2 year MOU if the Teamsters become the new union for the lifeguards?,” from the MEA\u2019s Ann M. Smith to Members of Lifeguard Service, said the “MEA\u2019s new 2-year MOU just took effect on July 1, 2009… this 2-year protection will be gone, however, if the Teamsters become the new union for either or both of the new lifeguard units.” Smith continued, “Under the law… the current MOU between the city and the MEA will no longer be in effect for [the lifeguards] who vote MEA \u2018out\u2019 and the Teamsters \u2018in.\u2019” MEA acting general manager Michael Zucchet and Smith did not return calls before press time. But in a written response to Harris, Zucchet said, “Any fear regarding the prospect of losing the protections of MEA\u2019s two-year binding labor contract are not being generated by MEA. They are being driven by the economic and political realities of our time.” MEA negotiated a 6 percent pay cut for the union \u2014 of which lifeguards are a part \u2014 according to Harris.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
San Diego city lifeguards will cast their vote via secret ballot Aug. 1 to determine whether a majority wants to stay with the San Diego Municipal Employees Association (MEA) union or join the local 911 Teamsters. But some lifeguards said MEA members sent letters saying their newest negotiated contract would end if they voted to […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Lifeguards claim union reps strong-arm votes","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11593,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-no-images","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}