photo by: Mike Yoder

Lawrence City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St., Thursday, July 7, 2016

Citing concerns about pay and working conditions, a third group of city employees is seeking to unionize under the Teamsters.

Teamsters Local Union No. 696 filed a petition with the City of Lawrence earlier this month to conduct an election for the city’s maintenance and Parks and Recreation workers. The Lawrence City Commission will consider approving a resolution to set dates for an election as part of its meeting Tuesday.

Teamsters organizer Dale Crane said key issues for the employee group were pay and policies. Crane said that employees have gotten small and infrequent raises in the past, and that pay for some employees did not reflect the hazardous conditions they sometimes have to work in. He said employees would also like to see clearer and more consistent policies.

“We’re excited and we’re energized to make some positive changes for (the employees) and their community,” Crane said.

Crane said 60 employees were in the employee group. The employee group includes central maintenance, GIS, engineering, technician, building maintenance and park field workers, according to the city resolution governing unions. Under the resolution, the employee organization must present a petition to the city clerk that is signed by at least 30% of the full-time employees in the group in order for a union election to take place.

The Teamsters filed the petition requesting to represent the maintenance and Parks and Rec workers on Jan. 7, and the city clerk subsequently certified the petition as sufficient, according to a city staff memo to the commission.

The maintenance and Parks and Rec workers would be the third city employee group to unionize under the Teamsters and the fifth city employee group overall to be represented by a union. The city’s solid waste workers voted to unionize under the Teamsters in August 2020, and Municipal Services and Operations employees voted to do so in October 2021. Those groups are in addition to longstanding unions for police and fire and medical employees: the Lawrence Police Officers Association and the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 1596.

The petition to unionize the solid waste workers came after the Teamsters initiated changes to the city’s resolution governing employee unions and the unionization process in 2019. Changes were approved in 2020 and included increasing the number of potential employee bargaining groups eligible to unionize from four to six and amending the voting threshold to unionize from 50% of all employees in a group to 50% of votes cast as long as more than half of the bargaining group votes, among other changes. At that time, Matt Hall, secretary-treasurer and business agent for the Teamsters, said that multiple employee groups were interested in unionizing and the city’s former requirements created barriers to unionization.

The commission will consider the resolution to set dates for the election as part of its consent agenda. The resolution establishes Feb. 16 and Feb. 17 as the days for the union election.

The Lawrence City Commission will meet virtually at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday, and some staff will be in place at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St. The public may attend the meeting in person at City Hall or participate virtually by following directions included in the commission’s meeting agenda, which is available on the city’s website, lawrenceks.org.