BY CSLEA Legal Counsel Jim Vitko and Andrea Perez

CSLB Reclassification

CSLEA is pleased to announce that, effective July 1, 2020,  Enforcement Representatives with the State Contractors Licensing Board (CSLB) will be reclassified to Special Investigator.  This change represents a long-fought victory by CSLEA legal and the CARII affiliate who worked collaboratively with DCA and CSLB management to get the proposal completed and approved.

Over the past year, CSLEA Legal Counsel Andrea Perez and Jim Vitko, together with CARII President Tom Ineichen and selected members of the CARII Board have been meeting with CSLB management on behalf of Enforcement Representatives (ER).  Based on concerns presented and with the full support of CSLB, initial changes were made to the classification last November which resulted in the promotion of 37 ER’s.  CSLB also committed to working with CSLEA towards reclassification of ER’s into the special investigator series. Towards that end, DCA agreed to prepare the necessary study and proposal for submission to CalHR.

CSLEA has long argued that the actual duties being performed by our CSLB members were more closely aligned to those in the special investigator series. This change represents a win-win as it provides our members with greater flexibility and increased salary potential while benefitting CSLB in their recruitment efforts.

CDPH Special Salary Adjustment

CSLEA is also pleased to announce that effective June 18, 2020 CSLEA and the state agreed to modify existing MOU language to reflect a special salary adjustment for Food and Drug Program Specialists at California Department of Public Health, retroactive to July 1, 2019.  In 2019 when the current Unit 7 MOU was negotiated, all Investigators at CDPH received a special salary adjustment of 12.8 percent. The Program Specialists have traditionally been an additional promotional position for Food and Drug Investigators and Supervising Investigators. The inadvertent result of the Investigator raise was to leave the Program Specialists with less than a five (5) percent difference between top step salary for Investigator and Program Specialist, and Supervising Investigator was now making less than the Program Specialists.

Given the clear inequities of the Program Specialists not being included in the SSA, CSLEA Legal as well as the CAFDI affiliate worked diligently with Public Health and Cal HR to rectify this inequity. CSLEA Chief Counsel Kasey Clark, Senior Legal Counsel Andrea Perez, CAFDI President Nicole Zugsmith, Vice President Joel Lambert and Regional Director James Chan met with CDPH on January 29, 2020 to discuss possible solutions. CalHR shortly showed support for the correction, and a side letter was signed on June 18, 2020. We are proud of the hard work that went into demonstrating the need for correcting this issue, and are pleased that all classifications at CDPH represented by CSLEA received the SSA.