On Sept. 27, the King County Council unanimously passed the ordinance approving and adopting the Classification/Compensation Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) negotiated between the county and Local 17.
In recommending approval, Council Member Julia Patterson praised the talents of county IT professionals who do so much to keep the county communicating. She stated, “Finally county information technology employees will be classified and compensated at market rate salaries.”
Steve Ford, Local 17 negotiating committee member, spoke to the council in support of the ordinance. He explained, “If no part of our customer's day is spent waiting for our members to fix some glitch or restore a missing tool, we have been successful.” (Read Steve's speech).
Iain Knight from Public Health IT also spoke, explaining the important work he does for the county and the taxpayers.
Local 17 Representative Alan Mador added: "I’m pleased that the council did the right thing. It’s obviously been a long road to get to this unanimous vote, and the bargaining committee has worked hard to hammer out an agreement benefiting so many members.”
Responding to the vote, negotiating committee member Peggy Taglianetti said, "It's gratifying to see that the Council appreciates the value of IT employees to King County operations and to the taxpayers. IT workers who are more fairly compensated will have improved morale and sense of commitment to their professional careers at the County. Appropriate classification and compensation are important components of employee satisfaction. Employees will fill their duties as they have for many years at the County out of a strong work ethic and public service values. However, employees will be more motivated when they feel their work is highly valued and appreciated by their employers. Ultimately, this will result in greater productivity and more efficiencies for the County."
The county will likely implement the new pay scales by Nov. 4.
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Steve Ford's Comments at the Council Meeting
Good Afternoon, members of the Council.
I have been asked by my peers to explain to you what it is that Local 17 members do for the taxpayers of the County. I could baffle you with byte count, wax poetic with parsing, discuss the delights of dark fiber, or attempt to rouse you with routing protocols, but other than my esteemed colleagues, no one would be very interested, so I will try to keep this short and simple.
If the County was a movie, we would be mentioned in the small print at the end of the credits. If it was an engine, we would be the distributor. If it was an animal, we would be the central nervous system.
- We don't write the email, we just make sure it is delivered.
- We don't make the telephone, we just make it work.
- We don't arrest the suspect, we just store their photo, previous record, jail location, court findings, and sentence data.
- We create the programs that perform the math; sort the data; store the file and back it up; allow information to flow freely without allowing attackers to invade our systems; and we work hard to keep the information highway from looking like I5 at 5 p.m. on a rainy Friday.
- We design, build, and maintain the wide area network, and the hundreds of local area networks that allow your PC to reach anywhere in the world in much less time than it takes you to pick up your coffee cup.
- When the Y2K bug was going to end civilization as we knew it, we spent months preparing, and then quietly stomped on it.
- If our network or system is working perfectly, we spend our time researching ways to make it safer, faster, smarter, and easier to use.
- If no part of our customer's day is spent waiting for our members to fix some glitch or restore a missing tool, we have been successful.
Our membership will greatly appreciate the Council supporting the class/comp agreement.
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