Federation still working on pay raises

• Published September 02, 2008

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The Washington Federation of State Employees hopes to buck history by winning a higher pay raise than other government unions in this round of bargaining. What's the hope based on? It's the biggest of the bunch, for one.

The 1.6-, 1.7-percent raises agreed to by the Washington Public Employees Association give you a pretty good idea of where Gov. Chris Gregoire’s negotiators are coming from. Past rounds of bargaining indicate everybody will get the same deal.

But the Teamsters have managed to eek out slightly bigger raises in the past, and the federation, which represents 30,000 general government workers and another 10,000 college employees, has never settled for as little as the WPEA got (even when Gov. Gary Locke was facing a deficit).

"It's not a matter of prospects. It’s a matter of commitment," said federation spokesman Tim Welch.

Among the arguments the union has to make is that the state has fared well in outside reviews, from management practices to best places to do business.

"That doesn't happen because of a governor, or one of the other department heads, the public lands comm., or the attorney general, it has to do with the people on the front lines doing that work," Welch said.

And, perhaps more concretely, there’s the matter of indexes. Welch says the governor's team is working off the implicit price deflator, while the union can point to the Seattle cost of living index, which is used to update teachers’ pay by law.

"The Seattle CPI is probably close to the real world than is the implicit price deflator. … The IPD is almost always lower when I look at it, and that’s usually what they try to settle on," he said.

Worth noting is a mystery at Western State Hospital, which is ground zero for the Washington Federation of State Employees. A DSHS institution, it's a place where conditions are tough and assaults on employees are relatively frequent, leading to union activism.

The TNT has been tracking the strange case of Dr. Andrew Phillips, who was dismissed as head of Western State Hospital for reasons not explained by anyone:

You can read the whole story here.