County employees protest outside admin building

Imperial County employees protested outside the administration building on Tuesday morning waving signs and banners asking for the public’s support.

Flavio Grijalva, with Teamsters Local 542, said, “Our members who are demanding that they get our contracts squared away with the County of Imperial. They’ve been fighting for a contract now for about a year.”

County employee Annette Hughes said, “requesting that the county negotiate in good faith. We’ve actually been without a contract for more than a year.”

They feel left out of the annual budget adjustments.

“As minimum wage goes up, these current wages end up remaining stagnant,”Grijalva said.

“We have county employees that actually can qualify for food stamps that are right at minimum wage,” Hughes said.

They say they just want what’s fair.

“Everything from wages to insurance to making sure that they’re taken care of just as much as supervisors and management feel that they’re being taken care of themselves,” Grijalva said.

“They actually need to look at this better. They need to look at the way they have spent the county’s money and their funds and that they should have been including us in their budget process all along,”Hughes said.

District 5 Supervisor and Board Chairman Ray Castillo said, “The county made an offer. We need to take a look and see if we can make a better offer. Just what that would be, I can’t really say.”

In the meantime, other county top level employees are up for a raise.

“It’s actually the county’s CEO’s office, which includes a few positions. One of them is one of the individuals that does our county budget,” Hughes said.

District 4 Supervisor Ryan Kelley spoke up during today’s board meeting and said the budget needs to get a second look. Negotiations are ongoing.