Article by Erik Smith. Published on Tuesday, October 05, 2010 EST.

Sure, it’s the Law, But That’s No Biggie

By Erik Smith

Staff writer/ Washington State Wire

OLYMPIA, Oct. 5.—It’s October now, and there isn’t a contract in sight for the state’s 65,458 unionized employees.

            The governor’s office and the unions are still talking, and normally, when it comes to things like labor contracts, that’s a good sign.

            But it’s kind of a problem, if you’re going to be sticky about little things like laws. The whole process was supposed to be done by Oct. 1.

If it’s not done by then, state law appears to forbid the governor’s office from asking the Legislature to approve the deal.

            But the talks go on, as if the law didn’t matter, because everyone seems to agree – it doesn’t.

            And anyone who expected to see hordes of state employees carrying picket signs and manning the barricades by now if this happened – well, that might take a bit longer than you think.

            Supposed to be Done by Now

            Unions gained the right to bargain directly with the governor’s office with a 2002 law. The whole process is so new that every year the state seems to wind up in uncharted territory. Sometimes the state winds up in court, as it did last time around, and then the courts wind up “clarifying” sections of the law that lawmakers never got around to writing in the first place.

            But the 2011-13 negotiations may be the first time that everyone from the top down – the governor’s office, the legislators and the unions – say the law doesn’t matter a whit.

            Every two years, the governor’s office is supposed to sit down with the labor unions and negotiate new contracts. The money required to implement them is supposed to be included in the governor’s budget proposal. The Legislature has the right to vote yea or nay, but it’s not supposed to second-guess and write new terms of its own.

            Here’s the problem. The law appears to set a hard and fast deadline for the process. It says: “Requests for funds necessary to implement the provisions of bargaining agreements shall not be submitted to the Legislature unless such requests… have been submitted to the director of the Office of Financial Management by Oct. 1 prior to the legislative session at which the requests are to be considered.”

            Oct. 1? That was four days ago.

            No Agreements Yet

            Last week, Marty Brown, director of the Office of Financial Management, said there’s no resolution in sight. For months now, the state and its labor unions have been stalemated over reductions in health care benefits. The state doesn’t want to spend another dime, and because of inflation, that means employees would have to pick up a bigger share. Meanwhile, unions representing ferry, home care and childcare workers have demanded arbitration.

            Brown told the House Ways and Means Committee last week that there was agreement on three smaller agreements out of the 28 the state must negotiate. That’s it. But none of those contracts have gone to a vote of union members.

            “Under the act we are supposed to have, as the timeline shows, contracts ratified by the various unions by October 1, and that is in order for us to then submit a fiscal impact to you. Right now we don’t have any contracts. We have three little ones and some arbitrations, but the big contracts and health care we have not gotten a contract on, and so we are going to continue to speak and negotiate, but how that fits into the budget is at this point is still unclear.”

            So Oct. 1 has come and gone, with not a single contract ratified by a single union – and no one appears ruffled at all.

            Can Change Law

            There appear to be three reasons. One of them is the most basic of all. The Legislature writes the laws, and if it doesn’t like the law, it can always write a new one.

            “The Legislature has the prerogative to change laws as it sees fit, and if it wants to change the law so that it could approve agreements approved after Oct. 1, it is certainly within its prerogative,” said Glenn Kuper, spokesman for the Office of Financial Management.

            So if the Legislature has to, it can tinker with the wording.

            Governor Can Submit Anyway

            Even if Gov. Christine Gregoire were to decide that the Oct. 1 deadline was a sacred, inviolate thing, and decided not to submit labor agreements reached after that date to the Legislature – she still has to write a budget. She still has to present it to the Legislature. In that budget she can ask for just about anything she wants.

            So if she wanted, she could include money to enact any sort of deal her office reached with the labor unions, even if they didn’t get the work done on time.

            Lawmakers might be free to tinker with it, but only if they dared.

            No Money Involved

            And then there’s the fact that no money seems to be involved in this year’s contract. Greg Devereux, executive director of the Washington Federation of State Employees, says it’s all sort of a moot point. If you read the wording of the law, it doesn’t talk about submitting labor contracts to the Legislature. It talks about appropriations necessary to implement them. If there’s no additional money, the presumption is that the old terms continue.

            “One of the questions we’re talking about is whether there is additional money or not,” Devereux points out.

            Lawmakers Might Punt

            What if there is no agreement? That question has lawmakers stumped.

            “If there’s no contract, the Legislature isn’t obligated to bargain with employees,” said Kelli Linville, chairwoman of the House Ways and Means Committee. “It’s management’s responsibility to negotiate contracts.”

            Said Gary Alexander, ranking Republican on the committee, “I think, on a bipartisan basis, we might turn it back to the executive branch.”

            So lawmakers might hand it all back to the governor anyway.
 

            Gentlemen’s Agreement

            The reality of it is that everyone seems to agree that since the deadline was muffed, the deadline doesn’t matter, and they might as well keep on talking. Actually, the state has missed the deadline a few times with a few individual labor contracts in the past, Devereux said. The governor has always included them in her budget request anyway. The main difference this time out is that not a single one of the unions made the deadline.

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