The Olympian is reporting that the first of the state employment contracts being negotiated has been agreed to. According to the article:
The Washington Public Employees Association has reached an agreement with Gov. Chris Gregoire's bargaining team for a 1.6 percent general pay raise in 2009, followed by 1.7 percent in 2010. Union members must approve the deal.
The union closed bargaining on the contract primary election night, Aug. 19, said Diane Leigh, Gregoire's lead negotiator.
It's news to me. I didn't hear from the WPEA about it (no news on their Website, either), and hadn’t been able to connect with Leigh until today. The largest general government union, the Washington Federation of State Employees, is still at the bargaining table, but if past experience is any indication, all pay raises will follow a very similar scale.
I called the Senate Ways and Means Committee to see what impact, if any, this news has on its projection of a $2.7 billion budget deficit.
Although the committee didn’t breakdown its projection based on a particular COLA assumption (instead used functional areas – page 3), I was told today's news shouldn’t make a big change one way or another on the budget outlook.
