August 7, 2009:NWLP
8/4/09
10:20 AM
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With State of Oregon
Public employees’ ‘shared sacrifice’ lead to tentative deal
SALEM — After eight months of
bargaining — and one week after
management had declared impasse —
Oregon’s two largest public employee
unions reached a tentative agreement
on new two-year contracts with the
Department of Administrative Serv-
ices (DAS).
The settlements with the Service
Employees International Union (SEIU)
and the American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees
(AFSCME), which together represent
21,500 workers, will trim $32 million
from current contract costs through a
combination of pay freezes and unpaid
furlough days. When applied to the en-
tire workforce in all of the state’s exec-
utive branch agencies, the savings to
the state totals $71.5 million.
If ratified, the new contracts will
take effect Sept. 1 and extend until the
end of the state’s two-year budget pe-
riod on June 30, 2011. The previous
contracts expired June 30, but were ex-
tended through Aug. 31, 2009, to al-
low union members to vote on the new
proposals.
“The Legislature, state negotiators,
and both AFSCME and SEIU ap-
proached this round of labor contract
negotiations with the goal of reaching
the targeted savings as laid out in the
Legislature’s budget,” said Steve
Sander, a training analyst and program
coordinator at the Oregon Liquor Con-
trol Commission who is vice president
of AFSCME Local 2505. “We tried to
be creative, flexible and fair in attain-
ing the desired savings without carry-
ing the entire economic burden on the
backs of the state workers.”
DAS had initially demanded 24 fur-
lough days and a total freeze on all
employee cost of living and step in-
creases. On June 5 it declared an im-
passe in bargaining with SEIU. That
declaration was withdrawn a week
later due to potential back pay liability
issues regarding an unfair labor prac-
tice complaint SEIU had filed earlier
in the talks.
Bargaining resumed and had been
ongoing until July 22, when DAS
again declared impasse.
After impasse is declared, each
party has seven days to submit to a me-
diator its final offer. That is followed
by a 30-day “cooling-off” period, after
which the employer can implement its
final offer and workers can strike.
That clock was ticking until July
28, when tentative deals were an-
nounced.
Ken Allen, executive director of
AFSCME Oregon Council 75, said a
key to the accord was the “unprece-
dented” cooperation between his
union and SEIU, which has not histor-
ically always been the case. “By work-
ing hand-in-hand with SEIU, by talk-
ing to each other throughout the
process and, in the end, finishing with
concurrent mediation, the state was
not able to play one of us off the
other,” Allen said.
The contracts call for freezing step
increases on wages for 12 months,
starting Sept. 1, 2009. Step increases
of 4.75 percent will resume in the sec-
ond year of the pact. In December
2007, DAS and the public employee
unions reached a “special agreement”
that added an extra (10th) step to the
top of every salary range, to be effec-
tive June 30, 2009. Also on that date,
workers at the lowest step in their
salary range were to move up to the
next step. That special agreement
came after Gov. Ted Kulongoski gave
unexpected pay raises of between 11
and 24 percent to managers and
agency heads in October.
The new tentative agreement essen-
tially delays the start date for the extra
step an additional year.
State workers sacrificed all cost-of-
living increases over the life of the
agreement and will take an average of
12 unpaid furlough days, ranging from
10 days for the lowest-paid workers to
12 and 14 days for higher-paid work-
ers. The furloughs include 10
statewide closure days for all state of-
fices except 24-hour institutions. The
first of these closure days will be Oct.
16, 2009.
The state will continue to provide
family-covered health insurance for its
employees, agreeing to pick up the
first 5 percent of any premium in-
creases each year. If premium hikes
are between five and 10 percent, the
Public Employees Benefit Board will
pick up those additional costs from its
reserves.
Members of each union also nego-
tiated new contract language on a
number of non-economic issues. AF-
SCME is still bargaining at “local ta-
bles,” where agency-specific issues are
resolved. However, the union is rec-
ommending that its DAS members rat-
ify the contract.
SEIU bargaining delegates will
meet Aug. 15 in Portland to discuss
the DAS agreement and determine
whether to recommend it to the mem-
bership, which will vote on the con-
tract by mail ballot in the ensuing three
weeks.
“This is a much-needed and greatly
appreciated contribution to the goal of
sustaining services for Oregonians,”
Kulongoski said. “It represents the
spirit of shared sacrifice and mutual ef-
fort that will get us through these hard
times. I am very proud of our unions
and their members for doing their part
in this difficult budget environment.”
The settlements with SEIU and AF-
SCME are expected to serve as a
model for settlements with other state
unions and will extend to the state’s
7,400 unrepresented and management
employees as well. When applied to
all of the state’s executive branch
agencies, the savings will total approx-
imately $71.5 million for the 2009-11
biennium, Kulongoski said.
Those savings do not include the
Oregon University System (OUS),
which is negotiating separately with
faculty and classified employees.
SEIU still is in mediated bargaining
on behalf of some 4,500 classified em-
ployees at OUS. The sides are wran-
gling over furlough days and step in-
creases.
The health insurance and cost-of-
living provisions in the DAS agree-
ment will apply to all OUS employees.
According to Local 503 spokesman
Ed Hershey, OUS wants 24 furlough
days over the biennium and a 2-year
freeze on step increases for wages. The
union is seeking to maintain the current
maximum of six furlough days and is
proposing no freezes on step increases.
Local 503 is holding a statewide
Day of Action on Friday, Aug. 7, to call
on OUS management for a fair con-
tract that doesn’t ask its employees to
sacrifice more than other state employ-
ees.
AFSCME has two large Depart-
ment of Corrections groups in medi-
ated bargaining. The union’s correc-
tions security unit represents about
2,000 officers at institutions statewide,
while the security plus unit represents
another 1,800 state prison workers.
Both units have mediation sessions
scheduled later this month.
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AUGUST 7, 2009
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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