{"id":204701,"date":"2026-03-05T00:21:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T00:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/204701\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T00:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T00:21:10","slug":"maintenance-water-division-employees-on-strike-in-the-city-of-orange-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/204701\/","title":{"rendered":"Maintenance, water division employees on strike in the city of Orange \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Public works employees are on strike in the city of Orange, following months of labor negotiations that recently reached an impasse.<\/p>\n

More than 70 employees, members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 47, which represents Orange\u2019s maintenance and crafts and water divisions, put down their tools this week to ask for wages and benefits they argue would bring parity<\/a> with other cities of the same scale.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 47, picket outside Orange City Hall on Wednesday, March 4, 2026 where they interact with a passing truck.The strikers are part of the city\u2019s water, sewer, public works, parks and fleet departments. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 47, picket outside Orange City Hall on Wednesday, March 4, 2026. The strikers are part of the city\u2019s water, sewer, public works, parks and fleet departments.(Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 47, picket outside Orange City Hall on Wednesday, March 4, 2026. The strikers are part of the city\u2019s water, sewer, public works, parks and fleet departments.(Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 47, picket outside Orange Mayor Dan Slater\u2019s real estate office, one of several protest sites, on Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 47, picket outside Orange City Hall on Wednesday, March 4, 2026. The strikers are part of the city\u2019s water, sewer, public works, parks and fleet departments.(Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

Show Caption<\/p>\n

1 of 5<\/p>\n

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 47, picket outside Orange City Hall on Wednesday, March 4, 2026 where they interact with a passing truck.The strikers are part of the city\u2019s water, sewer, public works, parks and fleet departments. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

Expand<\/a><\/p>\n

Dozens of workers have been gathering to picket outside of City Hall, including on Wednesday, March 4, when they were chanting their ask for \u201cfair contracts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur members are not asking for a huge raise,\u201d Local 47 Business Manager and Financial Secretary Colin Lavin said, adding the workers are asking to keep up with the consumer price index.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey haven\u2019t taken any of that into account,\u201d Lavin said, \u201cSo this city needs to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

City leaders and IBEW Local 47 have engaged in labor negotiations since spring 2025, around the time the labor union\u2019s contract with the city<\/a> ran out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe offered them the same increase as all our other employees, which is 2%,\u201d Mayor Dan Slater said. \u201cClearly, they need more than 2%, but unfortunately, we just don\u2019t have the money, so we have to hold the line.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have cut $20 million over the last couple of years,\u201d Slater added, referring to the city\u2019s struggle with budget deficits, which the council slimmed down to about $2.6 million this fiscal year<\/a> after approving nearly $18 million in general fund cuts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sad fact in general is all of our employees, every single bargaining group, of which there are eight, is under median pay for Orange County. And we are losing quality employees left and right because of that,\u201d Slater said. \u201cWe\u2019re certainly open to discussions, and we certainly sympathize with our employees, but we can\u2019t spend money we don\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slater said the city had been bracing for the strike, and city staffers have been \u201ccross-trained and they can fill in where they\u2019re needed,\u201d but will focus on essential services.<\/p>\n

Services that may be delayed or affected, city officials said,<\/a> include \u201cmaintenance and repairs,\u201d \u201cresponse to time-sensitive issues\u201d and \u201cnon-emergency field and administrative services, including parks maintenance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police, fire, emergency response services and the safety of the city\u2019s drinking water systems will not be affected, city officials said, and all service requests can continue to be made through the Orange 24\/7 app and the city\u2019s 24-hour water emergency repair line at 714-538-1961.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t talked about how long it\u2019s going to go,\u201d Lavin said. \u201cBut this is something that they, with dignity and respect, really want to do because they love the city and love working there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, maybe,\u201d he said, \u201cas long as it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Public works employees are on strike in the city of Orange, following months of labor negotiations that recently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,7,1071,23,171,611,136],"class_list":["post-204701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-california","tag-local-government","tag-local-news","tag-orange","tag-orange-county","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}