Sidelined: Collective Bargaining Bill Undermines the Power of the Legislature
2000-07
Once again Governor Locke has proposed a bill to bring mandatory collective bargaining to Washington state. This idea has been strongly advocated by government unions for the last six years, but as yet the proposal has failed to garner sufficient support to pass the legislature. Backers say the bill embodies sorely needed civil service reform that will boost efficiency and save money.
These claims, however, do not stand up to rigorous examination. As currently drafted, the bill would dictate a fundamental shift in the balance of power within our state government. The legislature stands to lose control over more than $3 billion in annual spending. The result will be a major increase in state payroll costs.
The bill, SB 6402 would empower the governor to negotiate, in secret, comprehensive and binding collective bargaining agreements with state employee unions. The agreements would determine wages, work hours, promotions, the number of job applicants allowed, and how much the state must spend for health benefits.
All this would occur without public hearings, debate or oversight from the legislature. The bill’s sweeping grant of executive authority effectively shuts the legislature out of a large area of state policymaking.
Once in place the terms of a collective bargaining agreement would have greater force than any other official policy except state law. The bill says that if there’s a conflict between an executive order, administrative rule, or agency policy and a union-negotiated agreement, the union position must prevail.
The bill represents a fundamental shift in power over the state’s budget, and therefore its tax policy, from the elected legislature to the governor or even to an unelected labor mediator.
Once the governor had negotiated a final agreement with the unions, it would be submitted to the legislature for funding. The legislature would be allowed a single all-or-nothing vote on the agreement with no amendments. The process would supersede the legislature’s constitutional role in managing the state budget.
Given this restriction, the legislature would face tremendous pressure to approve full funding for the negotiated salary and wage package. To not do so would disrupt state payroll and could create severe hardship for workers’ families.
If the legislature did not vote to fund a proposed pay increase, the bill would set in motion an alternative process that shifts power even farther from the legislature. This process requires an “impartial third party to mediate” changes in the proposal. But the mediator is chosen by the union and the governor, the two parties who had already reached agreement on the very collective bargaining package at issue. Result: the legislature is again shut out of the process.
The legislature has a fundamental duty to the people to control public spending. The constitution says, “No moneys shall ever be paid out of the treasury of this state, or any of its funds, or any of the funds under its management, except in pursuance of an appropriation made by law.” Collective bargaining places such severe limits on the legislature’s power of the purse as to make it meaningless.
Hawaii offers a dramatic example of how mandatory collective bargaining causes a state legislature to lose control of the budget. Earlier this year, that state’s budget projection predicted a sizable surplus. But under current labor law, Hawaii must first go through binding arbitration with government employee unions. The negotiations, conducted in secret, threaten to turn an expected $190 million surplus into a deficit. “If you crank in a 2% pay raise, you’re going to start running into red ink very fast,” says Budget Director Neil Miyahira, and there is little Hawaii’s legislature can do about it.
Mandatory collective bargaining has been tried and rejected by other states, and today only 23 states require full-scope collective bargaining. Since 1983 no state except New Mexico has tried collective bargaining, and even that state eventually dropped the practice. In ending the policy New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson said, “New Mexico employees already enjoy full rights and benefits without having to pay union dues for them.”
If SB 6402 becomes law all state employees below the level of supervisor would be required to become members of “closed shop” collective bargaining units. Forced union membership will mean a serious loss of personal freedom for these workers. The bill says that if any worker does not join a union within 30 days, that person will be fired.
Nationally, union membership has been in decline for decades, and it now amounting to barely 10% of the country’s workforce. The fall-off in unions is evidence that in the modern workforce collective bargaining retains its relevance for an ever smaller number of employees.
Involuntary union membership carries major cost for workers. The bill requires employing agencies to withhold membership dues from workers’ paychecks and send the money directly to the union. The union assessment on paychecks typically costs around 55 cents per hour worked. Freedom of association also means the freedom not to associate, and no one should lose their job for failure to do a union’s bidding.
SB 6402 would disrupt the normal constitutional balance by moving a large area of state policy out of the legislature’s regular appropriations process and assigning it to the governor and his appointees. As such the bill would hamper the legislature’s ability to control spending and to carry out its full constitutional functions.
As the legislature wraps up for the year, it looks unlikely this bill will be pushed through in this session. But its union sponsors will no doubt try again.
The long-term risk is that, if adopted, collective bargaining will greatly ratchet up the cost of running the government by locking higher in wage costs, and by discouraging cost-saving innovation.
Click here to read more about the author Paul Guppy.
Nothing in this document should be construed as an attempt to aid or hinder any legislation before any legislative body.