Unfortunately for their employers (the taxpayers), Clark County officials and members of the Deputy Sheriffs Guild are headed for mediation after contract negotiations stalled earlier this week.
Compounding the frustration for taxpayers is the fact that county negotiators and the guild had worked hard on a new pay and benefits contract and were virtually poised at the goal line in January. One relatively minor disagreement kept them out of the end zone, however. Now the 129 sheriff’s deputies and sergeants will continue working under a contract that expired more than a year ago, with little hope of resolution in the near future. Talks with a mediator from the state Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) likely will not begin for several weeks.
The deputies made several concessions in earlier talks, agreeing to freeze their pay for two years, thus saving the county $700,000. That’s enough to preserve seven positions in the sheriff’s office. But that deal was never finalized and, once again, taxpayers have seen public officials and members of a public employees union refusing to acknowledge realities that exist in the private sector. Negotiators on both sides continue to ignore the kind of shared burdens that countless private businesses have had to impose on their workers.
Ask anyone in Clark County who has not become ensnared in the 14.8 percent unemployment rate — indeed, ask any employer in the private sector — and you’ll find one constant: There’s a new normal out there, and mediators had better begin to appreciate it. No longer can we simply look at what a neighboring county pays its deputies, raise the salaries here, then watch as the neighboring county looks at what we’re paying our deputies and raises their salaries, too.
This never-ending pay increase eventually will push taxpayers to the breaking point. And when you add extravagant benefits that are almost unheard of in the private sector (the county currently covers the full cost of medical premiums for deputies, their partners and dependents), the guild’s stubbornness becomes even more perplexing.
Union members and county negotiators will point to a state statute (RCW 41.56.465) that says, in part, an arbitration panel “shall also consider a comparison of the wages, hours, and conditions … of like personnel of like employers of similar size on the west coast of the United States.” But that word “consider” should be viewed in the context of its true definition.
Furthermore, that word “consider” should be linked to the PERC mediator’s obligation to consider the employer’s ability to pay. In this case, Clark County has cut its general fund by $62 million (about 22 percent) since January 2008, according to story in Wednesday’s Columbian by Stephanie Rice. Only the most unreasonable contract negotiator would refuse to acknowledge that this employer’s ability to pay has been sharply curtailed.
The contract hang-up in January was the county’s refusal to put in writing that it would fill those seven saved positions should any of the positions become vacant. But the union ignores the deputies’ good fortune — again unseen in most areas of the private sector — that layoffs have been avoided even as the county has wrestled with its budget crisis. Even during the Great Recession, the number of patrol deputies has not decreased and remains at 2009 levels.
Today, under the new normal, mediators must look at what taxpayers can afford. Simply giving up cost-of-living increases is not enough. Most of the rest of us don’t have cost-of-living increases to give up.
The county, its employees and mediators need to get real.
