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In Our View: Shared Sacrifice

On pay and benefits for state workers, rational thought is finally taking hold

The Columbian
Published: August 29, 2010, 12:00am

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.

Yakima County commissioners recently announced they likely will request a freeze on wages of county employees. That’s not nearly as catastrophic as county workers will make it out to be, but it’s an encouraging step.

The first of two superb recommendations from the Washington Policy Center is to “re-evaluate the so-called 2002 Civil Service Reform that put state unions in the driver’s seat and policymakers in the back seat when it comes to certain budget decisions.” That reform meant that “state unions no longer had to have their priorities weighed equally with every other special interest during the legislative budget process. Instead they now negotiate directly with the governor, while lawmakers only have the opportunity to say yes or no to the entire contract … Lawmakers can’t make any changes.” WPC correctly calls for repealing the reform and “replace it with a law that simplifies an agency’s ability to use performance-based contracts while also restoring the legislature’s flexibility over compensation issues for state employees.”

The second great idea from WPC is to follow the example set by Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana. In 2005 when he took office, Daniels issued an executive order that effectively ended any state negotiations with unions. A spokeswoman for Daniels told WPC: “Employees are still able to pay union dues through payroll deductions. It is completely their choice. … The state does not negotiate with the unions on any issues. … The state sets the compensation, pay for performance increases and benefits without negotiating with the unions.”

What say we fly the Indiana governor out to our state and let him deliver a refresher lecture on the real role of state government and public employees?

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