Marin County has secured tentative agreements for new labor contracts with six of its 10 unions.

Members of the county’s largest union, the Marin Association of Public Employees, known as MAPE, have begun voting on a tentative agreement. Approximately 1,400 of the county’s 2,500 employees are MAPE members.

The other contracts have all been approved by union members.

County supervisors approved two of the agreements, contracts with the Marin County Deputy Sheriffs Association and the deputy district attorneys, at their meeting on June 24 as consent calendar items without discussion.

A large number of MAPE members complained about their current contract during the public open time portion of the meeting.

“A lot of people have taken time off this morning to be here because this is important to us,” said Erica Butler, MAPE’s president. “We are asking for a fair contract and what we’ve seen so far at the bargaining table does not reflect that.”

All nine of the county’s other union groups are negotiating full contracts. The negotiations with MAPE, however, are limited to potential increases in the union’s cost-of-living adjustments for 2025 and fringe benefits for 2026.

The contracts for the other nine unions expired on June 30. MAPE’s contract expires a year later. Its contract calls for a 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment effective this month. Typically, bargaining with MAPE would begin in early 2026 with these contract expiration dates.

“The county agreed to enter into discussions earlier than what was required because it was the right thing to do,” County Executive Derek Johnson told supervisors.

Johnson said the county offered to enter into full contract negotiations with MAPE, but the union declined the offer.

“That is very misleading,” said Rollie Katz, MAPE’s executive director.

Katz said MAPE suggested starting bargaining for an entirely new contract in January, and the county countered with an offer to start contract negotiations last month.

Katz said the union told the county that plan wouldn’t work because it would delay any additional pay raise beyond the 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment for this year. The county then proposed limited negotiations on wages and fringe benefits, and the union accepted.

However, Katz said the county then again proposed negotiating the full contract beginning in April 2025, instead of doing the limited opener. He said the union declined because the county wouldn’t agree to making any additional wage increase negotiated retroactive to this month.

MAPE pushed the county to compensate for the fact that its members will have to wait until contract negotiations next year for any equity pay increases by granting it larger cost-of-living adjustments than the other union groups are negotiating. MAPE’s current contract included equity pay increases for 73 job classifications.

Katz said Friday that the tentative agreement MAPE members are voting on now “did not address our concerns in a way that we thought was meaningful.”

“Our bargaining team concluded that even though we still had those issues that this was as good a deal as we were going to get,” Katz said.

Katz said the agreement contains some “sweeteners,” including a one-time payment of $1,200 to employees who are paid less than $85,000 in base pay. He said the county has also agreed to begin negotiating a completely new MAPE contract by Sept. 15, instead of waiting until next year.

County officials declined to comment on the agreement until it is presented to the Board of Supervisors.

The two tentative contracts approved by supervisors include “market-based equity adjustments” in addition to cost-of-living adjustments.

The three-year contract with the Marin County Deputy Sheriff’s Association calls for a 4% cost-of-living adjustment, effective July 1, a 3.75% cost-of-living adjustment next July and a 3% cost-of-living adjustment in July 2027.

The equity increases include 2.63% for deputy sheriffs, sergeants and deputy sheriff trainees; 4.65% for district attorney investigators and supervising district attorney investigators; and 6.12% for welfare fraud investigators. The contract also features some incentive increases for career development ranging from 2.5% to 7.5%.

The contract for the deputy district attorneys provides a 4% cost-of-living adjustment effective July 1, 4% next July and 3% in July 2027.

This contract provides a 7.21% equity increase for prosecutors in levels one through four. According to a staff report to supervisors, it also includes an additional 1.63% equity increase to prosecutors in level four “to address compaction.”

Salary compaction occurs when the pay gap between employees at different levels of seniority or skill levels narrows to the point where new or lower-level employees earn nearly as much as their supervisors or more experienced colleagues.

Under both contracts, the county will provide a certain amount to offset the cost of Kaiser Permanente health insurance. The contributions range from 5% to 6% of the Kaiser silver plan premiums for the prior plan year.

According to the staff report, the deputy sheriffs’ contract will result in incremental cost increases of $3.3 million in fiscal year 2025-26, $1.8 million in 2026-27 and $1.53 million in 2027-28. Including the cost of salary, equity, pensions and other enhancements, the three-year agreement will increase salary and benefits for the deputy sheriffs by about 16%.

The staff report said the prosecutors’ contract will result in incremental cost increases of $845,987 in fiscal year 2025-26, $339,330 in 2026-27 and $272,245 in 2027-28. The cost of the three-year agreement will increase salary and benefits for the prosecutors by about 19%.

Johnson declined to provide the terms of the other four tentative agreements that have been signed with the Sheriff Staff Officers Association, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 16, the Probation Managers Association and the Marin County Management Employees’ Association.

“Tentative agreements are usually shared when formally presented to the board for review and approval,” Johnson said.

He added, however, that the cost-of-living adjustments for the new contracts will be generally aligned and the intent is to use equity adjustments to bring all bargaining groups to the market median.