Green shoots of good news are sprouting in the patch of public employee pay and benefits. It remains to be seen if a full garden of fair-share sacrifices will be produced, but here are a few encouraging notes:
The governor, finally, is getting tough with state-employee unions. About two dozen labor contracts are being negotiated and, according to The Olympian newspaper, Gov. Chris Gregoire wants to more than double (from 12 percent to 26 percent) the amount state workers are paying for their health insurance premiums. Our impulse is to wonder: Why only now? But the more polite response is to applaud Gregoire and her negotiators for moving in the right direction. Why are they doing this? On Wednesday Gregoire’s budget director, Marty Brown, answered simply: “We don’t have any money.”
Blunt, but realistic.
Predictably, officials with the public employee unions disagree with the governor. But they also know they must balance the choice of lower benefits against the threat of more layoffs. And as we’ve often speculated, most people likely would choose to work for less rather than not work at all. Brown said the unions “can either talk about the percentage, the 88/12 that they always like to talk about, or they can talk about the changes in the benefit plan. (The latter) means significant increases in deductibles, significant increases in co-pays and out-of-pocket.”
King County last week reached tentative agreement on a contract that calls for no cost-of-living increase for public employees in 2011. As we’ve said before, COLAs shouldn’t even have to be negotiated during such a devastating recession, but at least this is a small step. Chris Dugovich, president of the Washington State Council of County and City Employees, said: “Our interest is in saving services for the public and preserving jobs for our members.” We’re guessing that the second priority is more important than the first to the union, but clearly, Dugovich gets it. He knows times are tough.