Why should unions work in each state to unionize public employees when they can just get Congress to do it all at once nationwide?

If the U.S. Senate passes the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, it will allow police, firefighters and paramedics in every city of more than 5,000 people to unionize and bargain for pay, benefits and work rules.

The House already passed the measure (H.R. 980) in 2007 by a vote of 314-97. The bill has 11 Republican co-sponsors in the Senate, which may signal enough bipartisan support to ensure its passage. President Bush has vowed a veto.

The Wall Street Journal recently pointed out that the bill will lead to legal challenges, increase the public tax burden, harm public security, and have the effect of forcing certain employees into supporting or contributing to a union.

Liberty, which used to be priceless and non-negotiable, now seems subject to debate. Are union clout and political contributions worth more to certain senators than upholding personal rights?

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Yeah we were a little late to the party this time, sorry about that. We have a great reason that a fancy song was written about that you can find HERE.

Anyway, episode 6 of the Get Free Podcast is now live. This week we sit down with EFF’s newest staffer, Sonya Jones, to discuss the “protection” of the WEA for it’s teachers. They were SO “protective” that they lost many fine teachers extra income. Guess why?

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Those are the 80-year-old rust buckets DOT decided to retire for safety reasons in November, three weeks after DOT assured the legislature they were in generally good condition.  Not that this will help the state ferry system, but we are always looking out for the Washington Department of Corrections, too.  Sea-going prisons anybody?  And if one of them sinks….
 
OK, now I’m just getting cruel, but majority legislators really aren’t big on building new “big houses.”
 
 

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After reading the latest article in the Kitsap Sun regarding ferries, I started thinking about how the state could sell its two foot ferries. If this latest deal goes the way of the failed attempt to sell the ferries on eBay, the ferry system may have to resort to Craigslist. Here’s a possible posting I wrote for them:
2 passenger-only ferries, like-new, used sparingly. Same class. 7,200 Hp. 35 knots max speed. Diesel-Waterjet propulsion. Carries up to 350 people. Paid $9.7 million each. Asking price $4.5 million each. $8.5 million OBO takes them both. Touch-up paint included. As is, cash only, no trades. Pictures below.

Docked at Eagle Harbor for easy convenience. Pick up anytime. Payment on the honor system. Leave payment in ferry union dues drop box. Call David M. at 206-555-5555 for directions or questions.

Chinook

  Snohomish

And if this doesn’t work, maybe the state could pawn them off as riverboat casinos on the Mississippi River or Gulf Coast. The possibilities are endless.

Let’s just hope that in the meantime our ferries don’t end up in this situation:
 

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…two columns on Friday morning.  EFF Labor Policy Center Director Sonya Jones has an op-ed in the Columbian in Vancouver concerning the state’s loss of a $13.2 million private grant to promote advanced placement of high school students in math and science because of arcane state labor union negotiation laws and the refusal of the Washington Education Association to compromise.
 
And Economic Policy Center Director Amber Gunn, along with policy analyst Brian Zapotocky, have posted a definitive commentary article making it clear that Big Foot is alive and well.

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The Washington State Residential Care Council has claimed victory over the Washington Federation of State Employees in the effort to unionize adult family home providers.

This week, officials with the Public Employment Relations Commission, WSRCC, and WSFE came to terms on how to count 144 disputed ballots in the election to certify a union. The final vote tally was 648 in favor of WSRCC, 552 in favor of WSFE, and 11 ballots still challenged. The 11 ballots did not affect the outcome of the election. There is a seven-day period for appeal. If there is none, PERC will certify the election results on May 13.

In 2007 the legislature passed HB 2111, which allowed adult family home providers the right to bargain collectively with the state for higher subsidy and reimbursement rates. Adult family homes provide residential care for the elderly or disabled adults.

After HB 2111 passed, many providers realized that WFSE would try to unionize them. WSRCC, a voluntary association at the time, amended its bylaws to allow for it to officially represent its members in bargaining sessions.

Here’s what’s interesting -– WSRCC dues are for collective bargaining costs only. A person or home may elect to pay an association membership fee in addition to the dues, but that fee is used for other purposes and is voluntary. In contrast, public-sector unions typically use dues to cover both collective bargaining and other non-disclosed membership and political activities. (This is why we need union financial transparency.)

Even though I disagree with the concept of mandatory dues, it’s at least nice to see one outfit (unlike WFSE, SEIU, WEA, etc.) that is willing to limit itself to workplace-representation issues and NOT spend its members’ dues money on issues and politics they may disagree with.

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The teachers unions just won’t stop with the finger pointing. Apparently, they believe the general public is so stupid that they will believe the unions’ claims of having nothing to do with the $13.2 million grant sacrificed this week. Of course, based on election results in this state that may very well be true. From the Seattle Times:
 

But here’s where the road turned rocky. Grant makers wanted to pay the teachers directly, an appropriate way of maintaining accountability and paying for a job well done. But the Seattle Education Association smelled merit pay. The horror!
 

The union could have overcome its general opposition to merit pay to accept the grant. Steve Pulkkinen, the union’s negotiator over the grant, says teachers could have requested such a waiver but didn’t. According to Seattle School District officials, Franklin teachers did. And so the finger-pointing goes.
 

Pulkkinen and the teachers were wrong. Complaints about pressure to do uncompensated work were answered by the grant’s direct payments. Washington state’s collective-bargaining laws require negotiation about pay, but that doesn’t preclude reasonable agreement.
 

Other states reached agreements, including ones with strong unions, such as Massachusetts and Connecticut. Seattle’s union should have been able to do the same.
 

How much blood do the teachers unions need to have on their hands before the public realizes the extent of their massacre of the public school system? 
 

Aside: On both the WEA and the Washington State Labor Council’s news pages today, the link to the Times editorial is conspicuously missing – so much for providing members ALL of the union related news for the day. [hat tip, Jason Mercier, Washington Policy Center]

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 The city of Vallejo, California has filed for bankruptcy. Apparently, the police and firefighters unions would not back down on their salary demands and the city simply doesn’t have enough money to pay them. Nice.
 
Vallejo has become the first city in California to file for bankruptcy because it didn’t have enough money to provide basic services. This is dreadful news for Vallejo - and its citizens - but it’s also an ominous report for the rest of us.
 

The city council’s unanimous decision Tuesday night, which came after hours of impassioned public comment, represents a failure of Vallejo’s police and firefighter unions to understand basic economic realities. The unions - whose members are among the highest-paid in the state - refused to allow the city to cut their pay.

The lowdown:
 

Vallejo has been slammed by increasing costs of its public safety contracts, the housing crisis, lower property values and state raids on local coffers. The city faces a $16 million deficit in the 2008-09 fiscal year which starts July 1. Tuesday night’s dramatic vote came after months of fruitless talks between city and labor representatives.
 

More telling:
 

City employee union attorney Alan Davis has said a union-hired financial expert has produced two documents contradicting the city’s assertions of an enormous deficit. Davis vowed to release the documents if an agreement was not reached. However, the unions have been unwilling to produce the reports for public review.

Call me crazy, but public-sector unions who negotiate with taxpayer dollars on how to spend taxpayer dollars should be forced BY LAW to make ALL of their reports public.
 

Some of you will recall that we fought this battle last year. We requested documents from the state’s 2007-09 union negotiation sessions. A coalition of unions rushed to court to prevent disclosure, arguing that transparency was not in the public interest and could irreversibly harm the state’s collective bargaining process. One union negotiator said he should have the right to swear at taxpayers behind closed doors. Eventually the King County judge ruled that the records are indeed public documents and should be released to us. This was a victory, but Washington could go a step further by opening all union negotiations under the Open Meetings Act. After all, taxpayers are funding the process AND the government employee contracts.

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Danny Westneat has a good editorial in the Seattle Times today regarding the $13.2 million education grant our state lost thanks to the Washington Education Association. As has been reported, the grant funds would have been used to increase the number of Advanced Placement courses available to students at seven high schools in our state, as well as to provide financial bonuses to teachers whose students performed well on AP exams.
 
Westneat points out that high schools in Texas that have implemented the programs included in the grant ”saw huge increases in kids both attending and passing the AP classes,” as well as “a 30 percent increase in kids scoring at least 1100 on the SAT.”
 
I think Westneat makes one mistake in his column: He equates teachers and union officials by saying the loss of the grant “was a union thing. Teachers didn’t like the part about the [financial bonuses].” Did teachers really oppose the idea of being rewarded for excellent performance? Certainly not the excellent ones! No, it’s union officials who oppose rewarding teachers.
 
Why? Because if teachers are paid based on how well they do their jobs, the good ones will have little use for the union and the bad ones won’t be sticking around long. Either way, it means less money for a union that exists to serve itself.

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Last night WEA President Mary Lindquist seemed to agree with EFF and other government transparency advocates. About halfway through KVI’s “The Commentators,” Lindquist admitted there needs to be more local parental involvement in decisions on teacher pay. For this to happen, parents need to be present during contract negotiations, which are currently held behind closed doors.

Now that we know the WEA wants parents to be more involved in such issues, EFF is more than willing to work with the WEA to help develop agreeable model legislation to open collective bargaining sessions to the public. We already have similar language for bargaining transparency here.

These collective bargaining negotiations involve a public governmental entity and public employees, happen on public time with public expenses, and deal with public money. Sounds like it is best for the children, the public, school district officials, and now the WEA to have these negotiations in public. Let’s fix this problem before our children are deprived of any more free money.

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