Cerritos Senior Center Employee Finds Fulfillment In Working For Her Community

As a human resources coordinator for the , Kari Franco acts as a gateway for patrons and their families to various resources that fulfill their needs, including housing assistance and wellness programs.

Helping seniors and families is fulfilling for Franco, who has been working for the City for the last 10 years and although she lives with her husband and young son in Chino, she is still passionate about the town she grew up in and is glad to make a difference in residents’ lives.

“I’m very proud of the Senior Center and the work that we do,” she said. “I just adore the residents of Cerritos and I’m very blessed to have my job here.”

Connecting Seniors with the Community

In addition to acting as a gateway of information for the senior population, Franco connects seniors to the rest of the community through lectures and programs such as SPICE which pairs them with students enrolled in the ABC Unified School District.

Her active involvement in the city has helped her bond with the seniors that she works with every day. However, bonding is tough for her, given that the demographic she works with is aging.

“The toughest part of working at the Senior Center is you get close to the seniors,” she said. “You build such a close relationship and they come in daily, but then they get sick and they age. It’s inevitable, but it doesn’t get any easier when you lose a friend.

Being Part of the Negotiations Team for AFSCME Local 619 Union

When Franco is not making a difference to her patrons and the community at large, she is actively involved in her union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 619, which represents Cerritos public employees.

She is currently part of a team led by Local 619 President Nick Melendrez negotiating a new contract for city employees.

Even though she is part of a team negotiating an agreement between employees and the City of Cerritos, her involvement with the union came out of a misunderstanding with city policy.

When Franco had her first child two years ago, she expressed concerns on some of the city’s employee policies, especially in regards to her maternity leave.

“I started to look at the memorandum of understanding between the union and the city and I started asking questions that weren’t being answered in that book,” she said.

She found that some of the common practices followed by city employees were “blurry”—many of the practices were not written down. Franco wanted more answers from human resources and other city employees, but seemed that it wasn’t going anywhere.

As for the rules governing maternity leave, Franco said that she had to use all her vacation and sick days during the three months and any time beyond would be unpaid.

“I felt worried when I came back from maternity leave that I would have no [leave] on the books,” she said.  “After those three months, if my baby gets sick and I needed a day off, I wouldn’t have any [left].”

She tried to reason with human resources about letting her go unpaid for a few days during her maternity leave in order to keep her sick and vacation days, but the department told her that it was not possible even though the memorandum of understanding does not mention the rule.

After trying to figure out city policies on employees, Franco, a ten-year veteran of the City of Cerritos, became more involved with AFSCME Local 619 and started to understand more about her rights as a city employee.

Keeping a Promising Outlook on Current City Contract Negotiations

Now part of the union team working to negotiate a new contract, she hopes a resolution could come as quickly as possible. The previous round of negotiations ultimately led and impose its contract to city employees.

“It was bantering but no real content, no actual progress on anything,” she said, describing the negotiations between the union and the city. “Every time we would start to get a piece of understand about why that doesn’t work in Cerritos, it was pretty much shut off. It was a feeling that we were the rank and file, it was like how dare us inquire the reasons and the whys that management makes the choices.”

Franco said she understands how management could perceive such questioning from rank and file employees, but argued that negotiations are a protected process and wanted to see the process work.

With the negotiations for next year’s contract underway, she said that the talks look more promising between the union and the city largely because staff had yet to use the services of attorney Charles Goldstein, whom she said has made it difficult for the union to work with the city.

Franco is confident that the negotiations will head to the right direction for the employees.

“We’re making improvements where we can without sacrificing services,” she said. “Without the residents, we wouldn’t be here.”