STATE EMPLOYEE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

BACKGROUND -- The 2002 legislative session was a watershed year for collective bargaining rights for state employees. Three pieces of legislation passed that granted full collective bargaining rights to state employees, faculty members at four-year state institutions of higher education, and teaching and research assistants at the University of Washington.

For state employees this was a victory that was 14 years in the making.

For years, public employee collective bargaining bills passed one house or the other, but not both. Though 25 other states allowed state employees the same full collective bargaining rights as private employees, ambivalence characterized the Washington State Legislature and the Governor’s Office. This ambivalence was exacerbated by the eternal cry from the business community for the privatization of state services, despite overwhelming evidence that, in most cases, private sector employers cannot compete on a level playing field with the public sector.

By 2002, the policy debate had evolved to the point of legislation that granted full collective bargaining rights, civil service reform, and allowed for contracting out to be bargained. Public employees finally achieved equal bargaining rights with private sector employees. HB 1268, which established collective bargaining rights for state employees, set up a two-year transition period with actual bargaining between the executive branch and state employees to begin in 2004. Historic first master agreements were negotiated and approved in good faith that year, and then funded by the 2005 Legislature.

Items not subject to bargaining include pensions, management policy, agency budgets (including financial basis for layoffs), supervisory staff, and how agencies deliver services in emergencies. Employees excluded from bargaining are Washington Management Service, exempt/confidential employees, internal auditors, and employees of the Department of Personnel, Office of Financial Management, portions of the Attorney General’s office, and the Public Employment Relations Commission.

LABOR’S POSITION -- Labor has always supported collective bargaining rights for public employees. Further, it has always made sense to us that the public sector ought to set an example for the private sector by using public dollars to create family-wage jobs with health and pension benefits and the skills and training necessary to support these positions.

The Washington State Labor Council is joining with our public employee unions to ask the 2007 Washington State Legislature to approve the fiscal terms of the contracts that have been negotiated and ratified in good faith by state employees unions and their employer in the executive branch over the past year.

The main fiscal provisions of the 2007-09 general government contract:

• 3.2% cost-of-living wage increase effective July 1, 2007;

• 2.0% cost-of-living wage increase effective July 1, 2008;

• A $756 lump-sum payment on July 1, 2007, related to the state's previous underspending of health costs;

• Addition of a new "Step L" on July 1, 2007 -- those at Step K for one year will get a 2.5% raise; covers 20,000 workers on this contract; and

• Health care funding will be tied to a percentage share, not an absolute dollar amount so that if employees contain costs, employee payments decrease.

The WSLC strongly supports full funding of all 2007-09 state employee contracts by the 2007 Legislature.

1989-96 -- Bills were introduced each year granting state employees the right to bargain collectively over economic issues, as well as non-economic working conditions. Each year, they passed one house of the Legislature but not the other.

1999-2000 -- The Governor-requested Civil Service Reform Act would have eliminated hundreds of civil service rules, allowed managed competition for certain public services, and finally granted state employees full collective bargaining rights. Passes Senate both years, but dies in House committee without a vote.

2002 -- The following bills were passed and signed into law: SHB 1268, Civil Service Reform; 2SHB 2403, collective bargaining for faculty at public four-year institutions of higher education; ESHB 2540, collective bargaining for teaching and research assistants at the University of Washington.

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Copyright © 2007 — Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO