State workers’ pay gets a partisan spin

Senate Republicans released a $43 billion, two-year budget blueprint for state government last week, but they fell short on state employee pay.

The plan outlined by Senate Ways and Means Chairman John Braun, R-Centralia, offers most state workers a flat $500 a year raise in July 2017 and $500 again in July 2018.

For the midrange worker in state government earning just under $55,000 last year, that is a total cost-of-living increase of less than 2 percent over two years. That is below U.S. inflation rate trends and won’t keep pay competitive for most workers.

By contrast, the nearly 40 contracts that Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee’s labor office negotiated with public employee groups would deliver base pay raises totaling 6 percent over the two years.

A recent Seattle Times report found that nearly a fifth of state agency workers would receive much more. That is because contracts provide double-digit increases for some key positions. An example is a 27.5 percent increase for certain nursing jobs at Western State Hospital, which is struggling to fill vacancies and retain its federal funding.

The state Office of Financial Management says that the cost of all the contracts and one arbitration award is over $700 million — if contract terms are applied to other, nonrepresented staff in the agencies. That total includes pay raises, yearly step increases for about a third of workers and increases in health care costs for all covered workers and families.

Braun’s caucus wants to reject all but two of those contracts and replace them with the lump-sum increases.

The GOP’s hard stance on the contracts was expected. For one, they save nearly $362 million in the main budget account by doing that. In a year when the Legislature’s top mission is to put nearly $2 billion or more into K-12 schools, every $362 million in savings helps.

Second, the proposal is actually quite similar to what Braun and colleagues tried in 2015 (when the lump sum was $1,000 per year). Braun argues that an across-the-board dollar amount favors lower-wage workers, but no employee would actually do better with a lump sum than the bargained raises.

Third, there is an old-school Republican hostility to labor contracts that keeps rearing its head. Braun insists the pay proposal is not meant as an attack on state workers, but many of his colleagues at the Capitol have been at war with aspects of collective bargaining and labor standards since January.

They’ve sharply criticized the process by which the governor negotiates with unions, calling it — with exaggeration — a secret negotiation. Other lawmakers sought to reduce the new, voter-approved state minimum wage in rural areas of the state.

Lastly, there is a tug-of-war between the legislative and executive branches. One fight involves the way contracts are bargained.

Braun complains that the Legislature is not involved until well after the contracts are ratified. The most lawmakers can do is vote to approve the pacts or to reject them.

This situation is the result of the Personnel Reform Act of 2002, which some Republicans and most Democrats supported at the time. The act set up a negotiation process that gives lawmakers the last word after the executive branch negotiates agreements.

The GOP is also going after Inslee with a proposal to keep unions from donating to gubernatorial campaigns. Sen. Dino Rossi, the Republican from Issaquah, argues there is an appearance of “corruption” because unions donate to campaigns benefiting the governor whose office in turn negotiates the contracts. Rossi lost two campaigns for governor against a Democrat backed by state worker unions.

Rossi and his colleagues have been selective in their perception of corruption. For example, they rejected Democrats’ attempts to extend the contribution prohibition to businesses and corporations, some of which seek state contracts and favorable tax, legal and regulatory treatment.

This year, it would be better to focus attention on more legitimate areas of the pay-setting process that can be improved. We think Democrats and unions could help their public image by opening up contract talks — at least enough that the public knows what’s asked and offered.

Some anti-union groups such as the Washington Policy Center want to open the closed-door contract negotiations completely. WPC would favor real-time televising of negotiations the way C-SPAN or TVW cover congressional or legislative hearings.

The late Republican budget writer, Sen. Andy Hill of Redmond, had a better idea as a starting point. That was to let certain legislators sit in on the bargaining sessions, but not share the sensitive details until an agreement was struck.

In the end, the business of government is carried out by workers, who need to be paid. Whether lawmakers accept contracts or reject them this year, state employees need to be paid fairly.

This story was originally published March 25, 2017 at 8:43 PM with the headline "State workers’ pay gets a partisan spin."