UKIAH, CA., 7/16/26 — Service Employees International Union Local 1021 says it has a tentative three-year deal: 3% raises for every job classification, up to 12% for the lowest-paid, free health care for workers on the county’s Bronze plan and Juneteenth as a holiday. Deputy CEO Cherie Johnson, one of the county negotiators, confirmed the agreement in a call today. “We’ll be publishing the MOU today,”Johnson told the Voice.
The union, which represents much of the county’s frontline workforce — public health nurses, social workers, eligibility specialists, mental health clinicians, road crews — said its bargaining team reached the agreement Wednesday, July 8. It also raises on-call and bilingual pay, according to the union.
For now, a handshake
None of that’s settled. A tentative agreement is a handshake between negotiators. It still has to be ratified by union members and approved by the Board of Supervisors before it takes effect. The union hasn’t announced a ratification vote date, and as of today, the county’s labor-relations page still listed only the expiring 2023-2026 contract, and no vote on a new deal had been posted to a board agenda.
What put workers on the sidewalk in the first place is a staffing hole the union blames on two years of board cuts. The union counts a 47% vacancy rate in public health, 38% in mental health and 32% in substance use disorder services — the corners of county government people turn to when they’re sick, in crisis or trying to get clean. Over the same stretch, the union says, the board eliminated close to 300 full-time positions.
The county’s own report counts something different. Presented to the board on Tuesday, June 2, it measures vacancy by bargaining unit — everyone SEIU represents, across every department — and puts that at 16.08%. Countywide, 15.67%. Retention, 99%. Those are averages across the whole workforce, and one department can sit at 47% without moving them much. The county’s numbers don’t refute the union’s. They don’t answer them either: the report gives no figure for any single department.
The courthouse rally was the third time in about five weeks that SEIU members turned out. They confronted supervisors at a June 2 board meeting, picketed the board again June 23, then moved to the courthouse on July 7 with a blunt message: the board, they said, had broken Mendocino County, and fixing it starts with being able to hire and keep the people who do the work. The contract covering them expired June 30.
A deal wasn’t a foregone conclusion. As the old contract ran down in June, the county’s offer was a 1% raise — a number workers kept setting next to the roughly 16% raise supervisors approved for themselves in 2024. The county has money troubles of its own: problems collecting property taxes and late financial filings that the Voice reported as the contract neared its end.
“We’re happy with the agreement we were able to reach with the county, an agreement that puts us in the direction to stabilize services for the community,” Jeff Weston said in the union’s written announcement of the deal. Weston speaks for the union’s Mendocino County chapter and works as a county eligibility specialist supervisor.
He credited the rallies and the organizing for moving the county towards an agreement: “that’s how we reached this resolution.” He added, “I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish together.”
The Board of Supervisors meets at 9 a.m. Tuesday, July 21, in Board Chambers, Room 1070, at the County Administration Center, 501 Low Gap Road in Ukiah.