Hundreds of Parks Workers Might Get Better Pay, Under A Long-Sought Labor Agreement. But Layoffs Aren’t Off The Table, Either.

City council chambers had the warm fuzzies this morning, as commissioners approved an agreement that could give hundreds of low-paid parks workers the increased pay and benefits afforded to union members.

Mayor Charlie Hales hates it when people clap at council meetings; he allowed applause. Parks Commissioner Amanda Fritz called the deal “one of the most significant agreements” in her time on city council. Commissioner Nick Fish trumpeted teamwork between city negotiators and the bargaining team at the union Laborers’ Local 483.

No one was much interested in the fact the city was essentially shoehorned into the talks that led to the deal, and had fought some of these changes for years.

But we’ll get to that. First, let’s note the commissioners were right in heralding the labor agreement as a big change in how Portland Parks and Recreation operates. As we’ve reported, the bureau has relied for decades on low-paid “casual” workers, who are allowed to work only a certain number of hours each year, and aren’t eligible for most benefits.

The agreement city council signed off on today changes the picture for employees who work in the city’s recreational centers—though not many other employees facing the same situation. The city has already brought 86 of those rec workers into the contract it holds with Laborers’ Local, and today’s agreement would set the stage for almost 50 more positions to be represented, meaning, potentially, wages of more than $16 and benefits for roughly 130 workers.

And the deal does something else that’s pretty huge. It creates a pathway for some workers not specifically guaranteed union representation to ask the city to recognize them under the Laborers Local contract, a provision known as “voluntary recognition” that union officials and city staffers were sort of at each others’ throats over late last year.

But the voluntary recognition piece of the deal won’t come into play for months yet. The big question before council now is whether it’ll fully fund all 130 positions that can now qualify for union benefits—an estimated cost of $4.4 million per year. Commissioners are under absolutely no obligation to do so, and all signs point to a heated discussion over whether to fund the workers or trim services in parks, as commissioners work up a budget for next year.

The most recent forecast for the city’s 2016-2017 general fund budget predicts $4.4 million in ongoing revenue commissioners will have to play with—in theory enough to fund all 130 positions, as Fritz noted this morning. But Parks isn’t the only bureau clamoring for attention. More than a dozen firefighter positions currently have uncertain funding. Cops want to hire. So does the Bureau of Emergency Communications. In total, the budget requests recently submitted by the city’s general fund bureaus include more than $20 million in asks for ongoing funding.

“Right now we don’t have the resource for all these things,” Commissioner Steve Novick noted, amid the morning’s general good feeling. “We probably are going to have to cut services somewhere, unless we can come up with additional revenue somehow.”

Now, back to the reason for this agreement in the first place. Laborers’ Local has been pushing for years to represent more recreation center workers. The city has repeatedly fought that notion. But officials ceased to have a choice in the matter last May, when an arbitrators’ binding opinion found that Parks had been asking low-paid casual workers to do jobs that were supposed to be completed by union employees. The opinion forced the city, in effect, to either make those casual workers union members, or stop having them do the work.

The negotiations that follow were at times contentious, but wound up culminating, today, in an agreement both sides appear happy with.