FAMILY LAW DAILY NEWS

Pay Hike Accepted For Riverside County Prosecutors, Different Attorneys

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA – The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a five-year collective agreement with the union representing Riverside County’s attorneys that guarantees pay increases and subsidies for medical care.

In a 5-0 vote with no comment, the board unanimously accepted the agreement drawn up by the Department of Human Resources with the Riverside County Deputy District Attorneys’ Association, which will come into effect on January 1 and expire on December 31, 2025.

The previous two-year contract expired last year.

A total of 264 lawyers are affected by the new agreement, mostly prosecutors but also lawyers from the Office of County Counsel and the Department of Child Support Services.

Negotiations between the county and the union lasted approximately 18 months and resulted in several changes to the previous agreement that included generous terms, including expanded time savings for vacation banks that are not part of the new contract.

However, the current agreement includes salary increases and eliminates several lower rungs in the salary scale, moving more employees to higher tiers or “tier” classifications.

Under the agreement, salaries will increase by 2 percent for a number of classifications starting in the summer of 2022, followed by a further increase of 2 percent in summer 2023 and an upward revision of 3 to 4 percent in summer 2024.

Beginning next year, an earnings program will be launched giving lawyers the opportunity to receive salary increases of 1.5 to 3 percent in order to get satisfactory or better reviews of their performance reports.

The county will continue to pay health insurance grants and reduce union membership premium obligations from $ 125 to $ 300 per month.

On the flip side, the Memorandum of Understanding calls for employers’ contributions to expire for most of the RCDDAA members serving in California’s public sector retirement system. That translates to roughly 8 percent of members’ gross salaries, officials said.

Employees who were part of the defined benefit plan that existed in the district before August 2012 are guaranteed a future retirement pension with a formula of 3 percent at 60. Employees hired after this time are entitled to benefits of 2 percent at 60 or 2 percent at 62, depending on their classification. The age at which the full retirement pension becomes available is 60 for the majority of union members.

Compensation is based on the amount – 2 or 3 percent for RCDDAA members – the average of an employee’s three best-paid years of employment, multiplied by the number of years he or she has been on the job.

The new contract corresponds to a contract entered into with the Riverside County Attorneys’ Association that represents 121 non-executive assistant defense attorneys.

Comments are closed.