One of the major issues facing the legislature this Session is the new collective bargaining agreement. Outgoing Governor Gary Locke and the state unions signed the agreement last fall, pending legislative approval this year. In 2002 the legislature passed a bill to allow collective bargaining for state workers. In addition to letting unions negotiate wages directly with the governor, the new law includes civil service reform and the repeal of our state's restrictive contracting-out prohibition.

Once enacted Governor Locke, sympathetic legislators, and union leaders praised collective bargaining as a new way to help state employees and include them in decisions over wages and benefits. But did the governor and the union leaders representing the 100,000 or so state employees really have the workers' best interests in mind? Will the salary increases they agreed to really be a significant increase in their yearly take-home pay?

In the next 105 days the legislature is scheduled to vote on this major collective bargaining contract. Now that the bargaining process is complete, it is important to see what they really agreed to last year. The new law takes legislators out of the process and only allows them to accept or reject the entire contract. The legislature cannot re-open negotiations if they have a concern over part of the agreement. They can only reject the entire agreement, which would then open new negotiations between the unions and the new governor.

With the agreement receiving initial praise from legislative leaders and not needing approval of the governor, the contract is expected to pass this Session. But legislators from both parties would be wise to take a second look at the entire agreement.

The proposed pay raises contributes nearly a third of the increased spending for the next biennium and thus is a major part of the so-called $1.8 billion "deficit." (Note: State revenues will increase by $1.5 billion over the next two years, but Governor Locke submitted a budget to boost spending by $3.3 billion, hence a "deficit" exists, according to Olympia budget writers.) Legislators also need to focus on a little known provision (allowed under RCW 41.80.100) allowing mandatory union dues to be set through talks between union leaders and the governor.

That's right, union leaders and the same governor - who once told union leaders that he would sign or veto whatever they asked of him - "negotiated" an increase in the dues that are withheld from state employees’ paychecks. What should make state workers question the collective bargaining agreement is that the amount of union dues they would now pay is almost equal to the proposed salary increase, as noted by an Information Services employee quoted in The Olympian newspaper.

Under the agreement union dues will increase to 1.37 percent of a member's salary. At the same time the average salary would increase by 3.2 percent in 2005 and 1.6 percent in 2006, according to the Washington Federation of State Employees. If I were a state worker I would not be happy to learn that my salary increase, touted by union leaders as the central part of this new agreement and the main reason the collective bargaining agreement was needed in the first place, is being partially offset by an increase in union dues. Indeed many workers are not. Employees in two state agencies, the Department of Ecology and the Department of Information Services, have threatened to leave their unions over this agreement.

Union dues should never have been part of collective bargaining. They should be agreed upon by workers and their union, not in negotiations with the governor. Washington should do what Colorado now does: end the practice of having the government automatically take union dues out of state employees paychecks. What workers pay to their union each year should not be a process of government. Why are taxpayer dollars being used to negotiate higher dues that will only benefit union leaders at the expense of workers’ take-home pay? Are legislators there to help union fundraising or state workers?

Legislators who were thinking this was going to be an easy issue should look carefully at the entire agreement before voting on it, and new legislators who did not vote on the original 2002 bill should be posing serious questions about what they are being asked to support and who will benefit.