Governor’s Collective Bargaining Bill Challenges Separation of Powers
1999-04
Governor Gary Locke has proposed a bill which would change the fundamental balance of power within our state government. Substitute Senate Bill 5363’s stated purpose is to revamp Washington’s civil service and create collective bargaining for government employee unions. It’s full effect, however, would be a radical shift of power from the legislature, the most representative branch, to the executive.
The purpose of dividing power at the state level, as at the national level, is to prevent one part of the government from dominating the others. Alexander Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist Papers that a balance of power within the government provides "security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department."
He explained that separate powers and responsibilities allow the members of the executive and the legislature to act as a "check on each other" and to "be the means of keeping each other in their proper places." In a democracy, Hamilton concludes, such a divided arrangement is "essential to the preservation of liberty."
SSB 5363 would disrupt the separation of powers by consigning the legislature to the sidelines during wage negotiations. This would prevent elected representatives from carrying out their full constitutional duties. Collective bargaining would ultimately move tax decisions outside the legislature’s control since, once payroll costs were fixed, they would have little alternative but to raise taxes.
The amounts involved are signifi- cant. The state spent $2.8 billion on wages and salaries, and another $705 million on employee benefits, in fiscal 1998.
The bill would empower the governor for the first time to negotiate comprehensive bargaining agreements with state employee unions. The agreements would determine wages, work hours, promotions, the number of applicants that could be considered for a job opening and how much the state must spend on each employee for health benefits. In addition to these specific items, collective bargaining agreements would also cover all "other terms and conditions of employment."
1. Consolidates collective bargaining authority to determine wages and the conditions of employment under the governor.
2. Empowers the governor to negotiate a single master wage and benefits agreement with employee unions that would cover workers at all state agencies.
3. Reduces the role of the legislature to voting up or down on funding for a final collective bargaining agreement with no amendments.
4. Establishes the governor as the sole state official to receive new labor policy proposals from employees. Public employees would therefore lose their ability to petition the legislature for improvements in their wages and working conditions.
5. Authorizes the governor to negotiate labor agreements on behalf of state colleges and universities that request it.
The legislature’s role in this new process would be reduced to an absolute minimum. Once the governor had negotiated a final agreement with the unions, it would be submitted to the legislature for funding. The bill states, "The legislature shall approve or reject the submission of the [governor’s] request for funds as a whole." Under this process the legislature would be allowed a single up-or-down, all-or-nothing vote on the final agreement with no changes.
The bill would thus create a process under which the roles of the governor and the legislature would be reversed. The governor, through negotiations with labor representatives, would set policy and determine the details of the state’s employee wage and benefits program. The legislature would be left to pass or veto the final result.
Collective bargaining for govern-ment workers brings with it a greater likelihood that at some point Washington’s government workforce could go on strike.
The governor’s bill states that nothing in the legislation permits or grants to any employee the right to strike. But the bill does not prohibit strikes either, nor does it provide any penalties if a strike occurs. Technical prohibitions on public sector strikes have done little to prevent such actions in the past. Between 1983 and 1994, 43% of all major strikes in the country by public employees were illegal. Over the same period the nation suffered 78 public sector strikes, which together idled more than half a million workers.
Passage of SSB 5363 would disrupt the current constitutional equilibrium by moving a large area of state policy out of the legislature’s regular appropriations process and assigning it to the governor alone. As such, the bill would hamper the legislature’s ability to carry out its full constitutional functions.
Whatever the long-term risks, the immediate impact of collective bargaining will be to alter permanently the balance of power within our state government.
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.