Just Budget and Transportation? There's a Third Priority on The Legislature's Docket
January 2002
These days we are hearing plenty about the legislature in Olympia having two big priorities to tackle during the current 60-day session - the budget shortfall and fixing transportation. Well, there is a third priority you won't be hearing so much about, granting mandatory collective bargaining to public employee unions. For years it has been a top goal of public sector labor leaders to get this bill, HB 1268, enacted, and now that the Democrats hold majorities in both houses of the legislature, they confidently expect it to happen in the next few weeks.
There is a reason backers are staying quiet on this one. The bill, innocently labeled "Civil Service Reform," would require all state employees to join a union as a condition of holding their job. Section 202 of the bill says failure to join an approved union within 30 days "constitutes cause for dismissal." The government would also act as bill collector for the union, deducting monthly dues from workers' paychecks, then forwarding the money in a lump sum to pay labor's administrative and organizing expenses. That clause alone is worth thousands of dollars a year in free accounting services, compliments of Washington taxpayers.
The bill's most far-reaching impact, however, would be on the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches of our state government. The legislature would lose its appropriations and oversight power over some $4.2 billion in public spending for employee wages and benefits. At a time when our state faces a severe financial crunch and with our road network crumbling statewide, our elected officials should be given more control over public spending, not less.
Half of state spending already occurs outside the General Fund, that is, outside the control of the legislature. This bill would move a further $4.2 billion off budget. The result would be to make the people's elected representatives increasingly irrelevant in the governing of our state. While the governor and union leaders engage in tense and lengthy closed-door negotiations, our representatives and senators would passively sit on the sidelines. Once a detailed labor agreement was hammered out, the legislature would be handed the final package - along with the price tag - for a single up-or-down vote. No amendments or other changes would be allowed.
Naturally, some Olympia insiders prefer it this way. It's so much easier to spend the people's money without all that annoying public scrutiny and legislative oversight.
The bill also makes public sector strikes more likely if behind-the-scenes labor talks deadlock. The bill's language says the right to strike is not granted to public employees, but, cleverly, it is not prohibited either. Either way, the "no strike" provision is meaningless window-dressing. State workers have gone on strike before without legal authority, as they did during their rolling walkouts last year. Mandatory collective bargaining not only makes walkouts more likely, it greatly strengthens the union leadership in any future strike.
The government is already our state's largest employer, with over 102,000 workers and over 10,000 new employees added in just the last five years. Mandatory collective bargaining would increase pressure to raise spending on government wages (that's why union organizers want it in the first place), so this bill will make it harder for future legislatures to control the budget. All in all, the bill will mean less money for other programs, and for sorely-needed transportation projects.
Franklin Roosevelt, who was not exactly anti-labor, put it best when he said, "the process of collective bargaining...cannot be transplanted into the public service" because "the employer is the whole people who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives..." In other words, when it comes to government workers the boss is us, not some distant and hard-hearted corporate board.
And that's just the point. Maintaining legislative oversight of public spending is a matter of respect for taxpayers. We have a right to expect elected officials to protect the people's financial interests. That is the principle lawmakers should keep in mind as they consider HB 1268.