Employee Benefit Overview

City of San Luis Obispo Compensation Philosophy

In 2011, the City of San Luis Obispo adopted a compensation philosophy that guides the City’s approach to adopting changes to City employee compensation and salaries. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that the City continues to provide excellent service to the community at all times through attracting and retaining well qualified employees who exemplify the City's organizational values.

As part of this philosophy, the City periodically evaluates the fairness and competitiveness of its compensation structure. As part of this evaluation, the City considers fiscal sustainability, community acceptability, the relevant labor market, internal relationships and other factors, such as economic changes, disasters or states of emergency. Based on industry standard, a classification is considered to be paid competitively if the salary is within 5% of the market median.

2021 Benchmark Compensation Study

In 2021, the City conducted a compensation study as part of its commitment to the public and labor partners, which found that many of the jobs at the City are not receiving competitive salaries, compared to similar communities. In fact, most of the positions that were evaluated were below the market median salary compared to similar communities (i.e. size, services, complexity, etc) locally and across California.

The methodology used in the report was informed by the City’s Compensation Philosophy which was adopted by City Council in 2011.  The Compensation Philosophy is a guide for compensation decisions for labor negotiations with the City’s represented employee groups and conversations with unrepresented employee groups. The compensation philosophy defines compensation as total compensation, which includes salary, health, retirement, and time off benefits.

The purpose of the study is to provide objectively verifiable data that will help guide contract negotiations with SLOCEA and conversations with Unrepresented Management and Confidential groups. The agreements and resolutions for these groups expire on June 30, 2022. Staff will use the 2021 Benchmark Compensation Study as a basis to guide contract negotiations with SLOCEA, and conversations with Unrepresented Management and Confidential groups. Staff plans to return to City Council in open session for the Unrepresented groups on April 19th, 2022 with successor resolutions and begin contract negotiations with SLOCEA in the near future. Once agreement is reached with SLOCEA, staff will bring forward the successor Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). The successor resolutions and MOA will incorporate the results of the 2021 Benchmark Compensation Study in alignment with the City's Compensation Philosophy.