Tentative agreement finally reached

PERHAPS IT was inevitable that the largest single organizing gain for Council 2 should also have produced the longest mediation session over the terms of a contract that anyone can remember.

Lasting a mammoth 15 hours, the negotiations finally resulted in a tentative agreement between the King County Library System administration and the employees.

Workers will vote on the contract during September.

It was almost two years ago, on December 3, 2002, that 550 King County Library workers voted to join the ranks of Council 2 in the largest local government election in memory that the union has won. In April 2003, work began on negotiating a first-time contract for the employees.

The negotiations proved demanding. At one stage, employees issued leaflets at branch libraries throughout King County, protesting library management’s positions on wages, benefits and working conditions.

The mediation session, held July 15 and moderated by State Mediator Ken Latsch, started at 9 a.m. and ended at 11 p.m. when a tentative agreement was finally reached on the contract — the first since the workers joined Council 2, says Bill Keenan, Council 2’s Director of Organizing. Keenan spearheaded the original campaign to organize the library workers.

“We believe the contract is a satisfactory agreement that contains all the essentials,” Keenan says. They are: Grievance arbitration, just-cause termination, progressive discipline, seniority protections, union security, modest wage increases and medical benefit protection.

Keenan praised the bargaining committee — Marsha Iverson, Laura Ritter, Susan Veltfort, Don Isaacs and Cindy Richardson — for the “incredible amount of time” they put into the effort. “They spent hundreds of hours and a huge amount of their own personal vacation time,” Keenan says, explaining that bargaining time had to be split half-half between work time and vacation time.

“Their perseverance paid off,” he adds. “They probably hung in there longer and put in as great an effort as any first-time committee I have ever seen. They certainly deserve a lot of the credit for reaching this agreement.”

Keenan also thanks John Cole, who started the negotiations before retiring from Council 2 in February this year and Diana Prenguber, the assigned staff representative, for putting a lot of effort into getting the final result. Latsch, the mediator, had assisted both sides in reaching an agreement, he adds.