Unionized state workers may get pay hike first

OLYMPIA – If state lawmakers get their way, state workers represented by a union will get this year’s cost-of-living increases two months earlier than their colleagues who aren’t.

“They didn’t lobby for it, but I think they appreciated it,” House budget writer Helen Sommers, D-Seattle, said.

The new state budget, approved by lawmakers last month and waiting to be signed into law by the governor, says that workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement get their 3.2 percent pay increase July 1. Nonrepresented workers must wait until Sept. 1. The same dates apply for next year’s 2 percent increase.

Republican lawmakers have criticized the arrangement, suggesting that it’s political payback to the unions who are traditional allies of Olympia’s Democratic majority.

“This budget … breaks faith with the people who do the work of the state,” Rep. Bruce Chandler, R-Granger, said last month.

Sommers counters that represented workers pay dues to collectively bargain for their raises, while nonunionized state workers don’t. Yet under a longstanding state tradition, the nonrepresented workers get the same deal that the collective bargaining agreements provide.

“I think if you respect the organization and the fact that they pay for it, you respect that they expect something for it,” said Sommers.

For some state workers, unionization isn’t even an option. Workers in the Department of Printing, Office of Financial Management, Department of Personnel and Washington Management Services are all barred by law from unionizing. In fact, the legislative staff themselves – the people who do the nuts-and-bolts work on the budget itself – cannot join a union.

“They’re being penalized for something outside their control,” said Darrel Mollenhour, a medical treatment adjudicator for the state Department of Labor and Industries. “I think it (the delay) is ridiculous.”

The union-first rule, launched by lawmakers two years ago, appears to be a rare example of legislators pushing Gov. Chris Gregoire to do something she says she didn’t want to do. With many state workers barred by law from unionizing, “she felt that wasn’t fair,” said her budget director, Victor Moore. But when she floated the idea of having all the raises take effect July 1, “legislative leadership” insisted on the delay for nonrepresented workers. Moore wouldn’t be any more specific about which leaders held out for the delay.

In an appearance last week before the editorial board of the Olympian newspaper, Gregoire was clearly annoyed when asked repeatedly about the delay.

She said she opposed the policy two years ago, only to “get run over” by lawmakers who insisted on it. And House and Senate leaders assured her the same thing would happen this year, she said.

“And I thought, well, you know, I am not going to get into a dogfight over this one,” she told the paper, which posted a video of the exchange on its Web site. With the state saving an estimated $10 million from the two-month delay, Gregoire said, she decided to include it in her own budget proposal back in December.

She said she was stunned when the Senate proposal, unlike the House one, wanted to give all workers the raise on July 1. But the House version – and her own – won out.

“If I had my way … everybody would get the exact same on the same date,” Gregoire said.

Sommers said she’s heard little – pro or con – about the delay.

“Only from reporters asking me these kinds of questions,” she said.

The largest state-workers’ union said the clause wasn’t a critical item for them.

“It’s not like a make-or-break issue,” Tim Welch, spokesman for the Washington Federation of State Employees, said Tuesday. “It does seem strange to us that we get vilified because there’s this two-month difference.”

Many of the victories that union negotiators, lobbyists or lawyers help achieve are shared with nonrepresented workers, he said. Workers at top scale will get an extra 2.5 percent increase this year, for example. And a lawsuit is resulting in more equality between salaries for state workers and state-paid college workers. Both changes apply to all workers, represented or not, he said.

Sometimes nonrepresented workers get things that represented employees don’t, he added. Two years ago, when union members were unable to get the state to agree to three days of paid bereavement leave, nonrepresented employees got it. The same thing happened with early retirement incentives offered two years ago, Welch said.

Since then, union negotiators have won both benefits.