Despite declarations by elected officials in the City of Jacksonville that the city is in the midst of a budget crisis, the City Council rushed through legislation in June which the Mayor requested be heard as an emergency that approved new collective bargaining agreements with City employees represented by two different unions.  The legislation, 2009-477 and 2009-478, was backdated as the city was operating under an expired contract with one of the unions.

Ironically enough, this legislation was quickly passed less than a month before the administration announced their intentions to re-visit the collective bargaining table to negotiate furloughs and other concessions from the unions representing the city's workers.  The new legislation authorized wage increases of 1.75% backdated to October 1, 2008 for employees represented by the Communications Workers of America Unit 120 and AFSCME Bargaining Unit 79.  It also included provisions to increase the starting salaries for any new employees and the maximum salary rates that could be paid to existing employees under the contracts.

While the city had been operating without an agreement with one of the unions for quite some time, the way in which the legislation was rushed through is quite interesting.  Apparently neither the Mayor or the Council was interested in drawing too much attention to these new contracts during the current budget battle which includes proposed tax increases to balance the budget.

Screen prints of the emergency legislation that cleared the council are below.