After Lincoln County blazed the trail in Washington for local governments to end the secret negotiations of government worker contracts, the Pullman and Tukwila School Districts quickly followed suit.

Labor unions are not happy about the new trend.  The idea of injecting transparency into the government worker collective bargaining negotiating process is an anathema to big labor bosses.  The strong mandate for government transparency declared by the people in the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA) means nothing to the special interests of organized labor.  They don’t believe taxpayers have any right to follow the negotiating process and hold government officials accountable for the spending decisions they make on our behalf.  Even though the public provides the money for these agreements, union executives want to keep the important and costly taxpayer expense hidden until the final bill comes due.

Adopting public employee transparency requirements would go a long way toward building trust with taxpayers.  It would also allow government employees to see firsthand what offers and counteroffers are being made by union executives on their behalf.  A policy of open public meetings would identify whether one side or the other is being unreasonable, and would quickly reveal who, if anyone, is acting in bad faith.

After Lincoln County adopted this policy of transparency, unions went on the attack, throwing up every hurdle to block it.  The union called the effort to allow taxpayers and union members to follow contract negotiations an “unfair labor practice.”  So far Lincoln County’s policy of transparency has prevailed, but unions have continued to try to block the effort with new complaints and there is a final hearing on the issue scheduled in September. 

Not content to wait for the hearing, unions have launched a preemptive campaign relying on labors’ favorite tactic—threats and intimidation—to scare other local officials from even thinking about following in Lincoln County’s footsteps. 

City and county officials around the state have received a letter from the Northwest Accountability Project warning against instituting open negotiations.  The union letter threatens that any local jurisdiction that attempts such could find itself “wading into a legal grey area that could draw challenges…that cost time and money.”

For good measure, the letter dramatically explains that the groups supporting open negotiations and fiscal accountability, WPC and Freedom Foundation, are pushing “an extreme agenda of hate and division.” Who knew that advocating for the OPMA mandate for government transparency would classify as hate speech?

The letter further makes the wild claim that WPC and the Freedom Foundation are “funded by out of state billionaires and organizations…that want to keep wages low, slash funding for education and eliminate paid sick days.”

Of course, nowhere in the letter does it mention that the Northwest Accountability Project is really a union funded front group.  The NAP vaguely describes itself as “a social welfare organization dedicated to educating the public on the issues that enhance the well-being of middle-class families and workers while shining a light on extremism and the moneyed special interests.”  But the spokesperson for the group easily admits “it is accurate to say that we [Northwest Accountability Project] are labor-backed.” 

Labor unions are the definition of a moneyed special interest.  After all, they get all their money from workers who are held hostage by compulsory unionism, and they use that money to protect and perpetuate the forced unionism gravy train.  And most would consider a group suing to keep taxpayers and its own dues-paying members (who have no choice but to pay those dues) in the dark to be the ultimate in extremism.         

 Click here to read the letter from the Northwest Accountability Project