Adjacent to Albany, where employees adhere to a standard 40-hour work week, El Cerrito’s staff operates under a 37.5-hour work schedule.
This lower threshold of 37.5 hours not only leads to a 6% manpower shortfall for the city but also appears to encourage a cycle of justifications for not appropriately engaging stakeholders in relevant discussions and not meeting deadlines. This abbreviated work week is also a factor in requiring various consultants to perform staff work at a significant cost to taxpayers in addition to staff salaries. Most recently $30,000 was paid it consultants including over $12,000 to facilitate a four-hour budget meeting.
El Cerrito starts accruing overtime payments at just 37.51 hours, in contrast to other municipalities that set the threshold at 40 hours. This practice leads to significant increased overtime expenses for El Cerrito.
The Albany contract says “The Regular workweek for bargaining unit employees shall consist of forty (40) hours within a seven (7) day workweek which begins Monday morning at 12:00 a.m. and ends the following Sunday night at 11:59 p.m. Overtime is to be paid after forty (40) hours worked in one (1) work week. For purposes of determining overtime eligibility, “hours worked” includes any time in paid status.”
El Cerrito’s contract says “The normal workweek for represented employees is 37.5 hours. The workweek begins at 0001 hours (12:01 a.m.) on Sunday and ends at 2400 hours (12 p.m.) on Saturday unless declared otherwise. The normal workday for represented employees is 7.5 hours per day. Those on alternative work schedules may work different scheduled hours as determined per City operation”
Comparison to Larger Cities
El Cerrito has about 25,000 people. The classification and compensation study compared El Cerrito compensation to a number of cities with populations 4x’s this size – over 100,000. That the helps to make it look like El Cerrito’s managers are underpaid.
We recognize the challenges that come with conducting such a study in a smaller city like El Cerrito, which operates both fire and police departments. Nevertheless, comparing the executive and administrative salaries of El Cerrito with those of much larger cities can create a misleading impression of El Cerrito’s staff being undercompensated. The state auditor conducted a more appropriate comparison and concluded that the staff in El Cerrito often receives higher pay than their counterparts in similarly sized cities. An El Cerrito resident analyzed the most recent data available on Transparent California, categorizing the information according to cities with small, medium, and large populations.
Total compensation by group are as follows:
Small: $320,464
Medium: $346,363
Large: $378,675
El Cerrito: $325,876
El Cerrito offers compensation that is slightly above the average for a small city, yet it falls below the average when the analysis extends to include much larger cities. Additionally, when the comparison is restricted to small cities, El Cerrito’s population size is still below average. The resident of El Cerrito proposes that the consultants should have conducted a regression analysis to account for city size.
Size City Population
Small Pinole 18,946
Small Albany 20,027
Small El Cerrito 25,869
Small San Pablo 31,907
Small Pleasant Hill 34,504
Small Martinez 37,093
Medium Walnut Creek 69,809
Medium Pittsburg 76,419
Medium Alameda 77,565
Medium Pleasanton 78,691
Medium Livermore 87,154
Large Antioch 115,016
Large Richmond 115,619
Large Concord 125,007
Large Hayward 160,602
While El Cerrito takes pride in finalizing the study, public citizens have pointed out numerous shortcomings in how the assessment was conducted. Considering the city intends to utilize the assessment’s findings to justify salary increases for administrative staff on a 37.5-hour workweek, it might be prudent for the council to verify with the consultant that the methodology employed included a regression analysis to factor in city size and took into account the reduced workweek.
Any increases in salary for management and administrative personnel should be contingent upon a compulsory 40-hour work week and performance standards.
El Cerrito Committee for Responsible Government (ECCRG) 