County’s union contracts deal looked pretty good at the time

Spokane County commissioners seem to have the upper hand in their battle with county unions in the public relations war over next year’s budget.

In adopting a budget last week that cuts positions or hours for almost every agency and department, the commissioners fired a broadside at their union workers for refusing to forgo raises in the face of a bad economy. Judging from letters, phone calls and comments on this newspaper’s Web site, the public is more likely to agree with the commish that in the midst of a recession, the unions should not be receiving cost-of-living adjustments.

“Give up a small percentage of your salary if you want to save positions,” Commissioner Mark Richard told members of the county prosecutors union, who asked if there were any way to avoid cutting eight deputy prosecutors. “It requires people to give things up.”

Nonunion folks already gave up raises, county officials said.

True enough. But before one applauds the board for a brave stand against big, bad unions, it might be important to remember one of the basic, four-word tenets of American business: A deal’s a deal.

What the commissioners really want is for the unions to let them out of the three-year deal the county signed two years ago. And to get out of the deal, county officials want to ignore a primary rule of collective bargaining: To get something, you give something. The county doesn’t have much to give, which puts them in a very poor bargaining position.

(By way of full disclosure, The Spokesman-Review news department employees have a union, and I’m a former union president who has negotiated several contracts with newspaper management, including some with raises and others with cuts.)

The main bone of contention between the county and its unions are what both sides call, somewhat incorrectly, COLAs.

A true cost-of-living adjustment is just that: If the cost of living goes up 10 percent, pay goes up 10 percent, and if it goes down 10 percent, pay goes down 10 percent. What the county and the unions really negotiated is a raise with a floor and a ceiling. If the cost of living went up any amount between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent, pay would go up by that amount. If it went up more – 5 percent, 10 percent, 50 percent – pay would go up no more than 3.5 percent. If cost of living went up 2 percent or 1 percent, or down any amount, pay would go up 2.5 percent.

When the county and the unions reached that agreement, the real estate market was on steroids, tax revenues were flowing and the county was focused mainly on the upper limit of the raise. County workers agreed to pick up a bit more of their benefit costs, the county got predictable labor costs for three years, and 3.5 percent was less than what some other government agencies were giving their unions.

Neither side thought about the floor, said Gordon Smith, the staff representative for the Washington State Council of County and City Employees, which represents many of the county workers.

“We thought we cut a good deal,” County Board Chairman Todd Mielke conceded last week.

When the recession hit, the county realized it was not a good deal and asked to reopen the contract to cancel the raises. The unions, not surprisingly, asked what the county would give them in return. County officials said they’d lay off fewer people.

Smith said the unions wanted to save as many jobs as possible. Because there are so many departments and offices, and professional specialties within those offices, the county’s unions are fairly Balkanized, so there were many different suggestions. Many members wanted a one-year extension to the contract.

Mielke said with the economy still sliding and the state and federal government likely to cut their payments to counties, the county is reluctant to add a year onto the contract. “In hindsight, we probably should have gone with a shorter contract” in 2008, he said.

Obviously, both sides are frustrated. Last week, commissioners laid all the blame at the feet of the unions. Then they said something surprising – that if the unions changed their minds, changes could still be made by Dec. 31.

That was news to Smith, who thought negotiations were over when the budget was approved last Tuesday. By Friday, Smith said, the two sides had agreed to sit down this week for more talks. He wouldn’t say what was on the table, but added: “They have something in mind, and so do we. Each side is at least willing to talk.”