Getting Back To Square 1 Good Idea

The Coeur d’Alene City Council couldn’t have made a bigger mess of employee relations.

First, the city engaged in a year’s worth of heated talks with two of its three unions. Then, council members voted 5-1 in April to do away with their historic collective bargaining agreement. Now, police officers and city workers are circulating petitions to put a new bargaining pact on a February ballot. It calls for binding arbitration and would be worse than the original.

Ideally, skillful personnel management by the city would make relations harmonious and the hassles of union bargaining unnecessary. But the challenge now for the city is to get back to the reasonable approach that has worked well since 1982, when Coeur d’Alene became the first Idaho city to offer employees collective bargaining.

Both sides - and city taxpayers - are running a big risk if the employees’ initiative qualifies for an election.

If the measure passes, it could create a rift between city management and employees that might never close. Gone would be City Hall’s notable esprit de corps. The flexibility and informality of the current workplace would be replaced by an us-versus-them mentality that could affect service and dealings with the public. Then, binding arbitration and annual labor squabbles would raise the specter of tax increases or layoffs and service cuts.

The City Council, to its credit and good fortune, has managed the public purse well during the 1990s. Incredibly, city taxes paid by the average Coeur d’Alene resident have fallen since 1990. Binding arbitration could change that. Ask Spokane officials.

In 1978, an arbitrator stunned Spokane by awarding a budget-busting 17.3 percent increase in pay and benefits to police officers.

Meanwhile, Coeur d’Alene’s city workers might find voters a hard sell. It’s easy to collect signatures. It’s harder to persuade taxpayers in a tourism economy to risk being taxed more to support higher wages and benefits for jobs many would love to have. The average Lake City salary isn’t approaching $35,000, as it is at City Hall. Most workers in the private sector don’t receive six weeks of paid vacation after 10 years.

For the good of Coeur d’Alene, both sides should return to the drawing board. What worked before can work again. At this point, the City Council is playing Stan Laurel to the unions’ Oliver Hardy. Both sides share the responsibility for getting city taxpayers into a fine mess.