Case managers, program specialists and therapists at the private organization - which helps clients with mental health, drug problems and domestic abuse issues - marched along 10th Street near U.S. 101, chanting slogans and cheering cars that honked in support.

"Community Solutions, you're no good. Treat your workers like you should," the crowd sang.

The Service Employees International Union, Local 521, represents more than 52,000 workers in the Bay Area, including the 86 union employees who work at Community Solutions in Gilroy, Hollister and Morgan Hill. The negotiation bloc has met with management six times during the past two months, but workers are still fighting for an annual cost of living adjustment. Otherwise, many said they won't be able to make ends meet.

"This is something we rightfully deserve, and it also impacts our clients and the work we do for the community," said John Delgado, a therapist who has worked at Community Solutions in Gilroy for nine years.

Delgado and other union employees received a 3-percent COLA last year, after contract negotiations concluded in October 2007. The contract also stipulated that employees receive a 2 percent pay bump each year for up to five years.

But due to cloudy economic forecasts last year, President and CEO Erin O'Brien said the two sides agreed to revisit the cost of living adjustment each year until 2010 rather than build in automatic increases.

Management has not offered a cost of living adjustment this year because the nonprofit expects significant state and local funding cuts along with fewer private donations, O'Brien said. She declined to speculate what portion of the nonprofit's $10.5 million budget the cuts would likely represent. To save money so far, managers foot their own health insurance bills and have taken benefit cuts while Community Solutions has continued to completely cover union employees and their dependents by absorbing a 52-percent increase in health care costs since 2005, according to O'Brien.

"Rather than past that cost on, we eat that," O'Brien said, adding that restricted grants and higher costs "limit us in our ability to change salaries."

Every public dime the nonprofit receives has to fund certain projects that involve certain employees. So, when funding for, say, helping foster kids learn independence skills runs dry, money for another particular program that pays another employees' particular wages cannot be shifted around. That makes it harder to offer wage increases, O'Brien said.

"We're in a balancing act of being grant dollar stewards and looking after our employees, and frankly I think we do it well," she said. "All the (union members) have to do is turn on radio to hear how many people are losing there jobs all over."

Suzanne Lopez disagreed.

The case manager who has spent 12 years at Community Solutions said she and other staff "on the front lines" deserve raises commensurate with the increased costs of living and that union members would have never agreed with yearly cost of living adjustment talks if they did not entail actual raises. Lopez also decried recent news that the company had hired a new manager and training director to join the Gilroy team, proving there is more money to go around, she and others said.

"It's unfortunate the opportunities being created are mostly for the group's upper-level managers and not so much for the front-line workers who dedicate their lives to improving the lives of others," wrote Khanh Weinberg, communications specialist for Local 521.

One talking point among union members is the fact that O'Brien received a nearly 23 percent raise last year. The nonprofit's board of directors voted to raise her salary from $99,625 to $122,460, but O'Brien, who has worked at Community Solutions since 1996 and as the CEO since 2002, pointed out that her predecessor made more than that after only six months on the job. She acknowledged that her raise "sounds self-serving," but she said her former salary lagged significantly behind counterparts' at other area nonprofits, and her current one still sits at the bottom range. Managerial employees at other comparable nonprofits, who declined to be named, agreed.

As for the union members' salaries, they are "very competitive" with other nonprofits, especially in terms of total compensation, O'Brien said. A Community Solutions therapist earns $24.02 per hour, with union employees at nearby agencies making between $5.21 and $22.19, she said. A case manager at Community Solutions earns $19.71 an hour, square in the area's going range of $15.17 to $20.59 per hour, according to O'Brien.

But Weinberg said therapists at Community Solutions make 23 percent less than counterparts at other nonprofits in the region.

"There are certain matters of fact we disagree on," O'Brien said of the salary comparisons and the union's deductions. "We did salary surveys of other agencies and have opened our finances to the union. We have been very transparent."

O'Brien also criticized the union's tactic of stoking the "us versus them" fire and said "union folks lean on staff pretty heavily" because dues are based on salaries.

"I really do differentiate between the union and employees. We're all in this boat together," O'Brien said. "I respect everyone."

"Yeah, they say they respect us and care about us," Case Manager Carlos Antonio Flores said, "and when there's no movement in our salaries, it really shows how much they respect us."

Community Services has three offices in Morgan Hill, one in Gilroy and one in Hollister. The nonprofit employs 117 people. Of those, 94 are full time and 23 are part time. Union staff accounts for 86 employees, and non-union directors, managers, administrators and doctors compose the remaining.