Solano County public defenders took to the picket lines Tuesday amid a contract dispute that’s been dragging on since October.
The public defenders — county lawyers who represent criminal defendants who can’t afford an attorney — voted to authorize a strike in February and have been on strike since.
During that time, they have been working on their existing cases but are refusing to take new clients until the county comes back to the bargaining table, according to Deputy Public Defender Mardin Malik, who has been with the county for 14 years.
“We’ve been trying to do everything we can to get them to budge,” Malik said. “They just will not do it.”
Malik said he and his colleagues currently earn, on average, about 14% less than their counterparts in neighboring counties and 20% less than the Bay Area’s average public defender salary.
He said the county is offering a 3%, 2% and 1% cost of living increase over three years but that doesn’t even keep pace with counties like San Joaquin, Placer and Yolo, which pay about 8% higher than what Solano County public defenders now make.
The county’s Public Defender’s Office is currently well staffed, but Malik said without a competitive salary increase, it could lose attorneys to other, higher-paying jurisdictions, which has happened in the past.
“That’s not theoretical, we’ve seen that play out,” he said.
The union, Teamsters Joint Council 7, hopes the strike will convince the county to come to the table with a reasonable offer.
“It’s been months and months,” Malik said. “We’ve submitted letters and offers and we’ve gotten crickets in response.”
A spokesperson for the county didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The public defenders were walking a picket line at the Solano County Administrative Building in Fairfield as of midday Tuesday.