Orange County supervisors unanimously praised their employees charged with connecting residents to essential food and health services on Tuesday morning, calling them the “front line” of county services who keep people from going hungry or sick.
But a couple hours later, they faced a big question from those same employees – how much are we really worth to you?
“Me and my coworkers have to pay a monthly fee just to receive drinking water within our facilities,” said Michael Flowers, a board member of the local AFSCME union that represents those workers, at the meeting. “Many of my coworkers have not received a decent pay raise in years.”
Flowers also highlighted the county had rejected all their suggestions in union negotiations, and questioned what supervisors’ words were really worth.
“We are more than just those that evaluate for medical, food stamps, and others. We are therapists, we are motivational speakers. We are security guards for when things get rough,” he continued. “Let’s show them how powerful 1,400 members are when we come together as one.”
They’re not the only union asking supervisors those same questions.
While AFSCME is still negotiating their contract, Orange County supervisors quietly signed off on a series of new contracts for several of their largest unions on Tuesday, granting a 3% raise to four of the county’s seven major unions.
It comes after supervisors quietly gave themselves a 25% raise in June 2025 when they’d already implemented a hiring freeze, with supervisors resisting calls to cancel the raise or two members – Chairman Doug Chafee and Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento – opting to donate their raises to charity.
Read: OC Supervisors Say It’s Illegal to Slash Their Salary Hikes
The new union contracts are only good for one year instead of the usual three year term, sending negotiators back to the bargaining table amid questions over thousands of frozen vacant positions and a growing operational budget deficit county leaders are struggling to patch.
Which Unions Signed a Deal for Raises?
Supervisors approved new contracts with 3% wage increases for the OC Employees Association, Orange County Attorneys Association, Orange County Managers Association and International Union of Operating Engineers.
Members of the local teamsters union shot down the proposed raise, and no contracts have been publicly presented yet with AFSCME or the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs.
Those increases only came after a series of back and forth negotiations, with county leaders initially offering no wage increases.
Read: OC Leaders Praise Labor for 4th of July, Skip Raises For Workers But Not Themselves
OC Employees Association leaders encouraged their members to sign onto the 3% raise in an unsigned letter to their members on Aug. 13.
“For the first time, County CEO KC Roestenberg and Chief Human Resource Officer Jamie Newton personally attended the bargaining session to deliver the County’s bridge proposal and stated that the offer represented not only the full extent of their authority, but also the furthest the County was willing to move in negotiations,” reads the letter.
They also raised concerns that if members didn’t sign the raise now, they would miss out on other wages.
“Based on everything that occurred at the table, we do not believe the County is prepared to move further right now, even if we mounted a long and drawn-out fight,” reads the statement. “Continuing to negotiate would mean more time without a contract, no guarantee of additional movement, and—given the County’s longstanding position against retroactivity—lost wages for members.”
By comparison, the employee association’s last contract was approved in June 2023 and ran for three years, giving workers a combined 13% raise over three years according to county records.
The unions have also traditionally been some of the largest spenders in Orange County politics.
This year alone, the sheriff’s deputies union, firefighters association and general employees association have collectively spent over $1.3 million supporting and opposing their chosen candidates for supervisor according to campaign disclosures.
Thousands of Jobs Put on Ice Amid Budget Woes
Since January 2025, the county has been under a hiring freeze that prevents department heads from hiring replacements when employees leave without an express signoff from the budget team.
Of the 1,877 positions frozen since then, only 617 have been reopened, leaving over 1,200 jobs still fully funded in the county’s budget, but without anyone working them according to county records reviewed by Voice of OC.
That represents nearly 7% of the county’s entire staff pool.
Most of those vacancies are in the county Social Services Agency and county Health Care Agency, which collectively have over 600 frozen positions, along with the sheriff’s department, which holds 260 as of Aug. 7.
To review which departments have frozen positions, click here.
CB Barfield, general manager of the OC Employees Association, said the situation is even worse than what the numbers show, highlighting that the county had also erased hundreds of other vacant positions from the books altogether.
“In the early stages of negotiations this year, the County CFO said budget savings came from eliminating positions,” Barfield wrote in a Tuesday statement. “We then learned, to our shock, the County had deleted 887 OCEA represented positions during our contract term, leaving far fewer essential workers to serve Orange County residents.”
“Combined with current vacancies, our members face a 19% functional vacancy rate,” he continued. “The County must fill these positions and provide relief now.”
That shift came after county executives disclosed they were facing a dangerous budget future, with former CEO Michelle Aguirre saying they fell $75 million short of a structurally balanced budget this year.
Read: Orange County Leaders Warn of Dangerous Budget Future
Cities throughout the county often eliminate vacant positions when facing financial headwinds, ending efforts to fill the empty jobs and restoring that money to the general fund to help pay for rising costs – but it also guarantees a shrinkage of their overall work force.
Limited Answers on County’s Retirement Offerings
Another proposal put up by county leaders earlier this year that could shrink their workforce even further is a proposed retirement deal that would be offered to roughly 2,000 county employees.
Details on the program are scarce, and county leaders have not yet met with many of the union heads needed to move forward with the program after it was first announced in June.
But there were many concerns raised in June over whether those positions would be reopened for cheaper staffers or if they would be closed out altogether, with supervisors ultimately opting not to automatically close out the positions of those who leave after pushback from Barfield.
“Until the County guarantees backfilling vacant OCEA represented positions, we’re not interested in this program,” Barfield said on Tuesday. “We reject any program that cuts public services without guaranteed backfilling. Frontline workers need relief, not more position cuts. OCEA and the County have not engaged in any further substantive discussions to date.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.
