Spokane County talks drag on and on
Commissioners’ decision creates opportunity for Council 2
Two members of the three-person Spokane County Board of Commissioners have decided not to run for re-election, providing “a tremendous opportunity” for Council 2 in the November elections, says the union’s Deputy Director Pat Thompson.
“These openings provide us with the chance to fill those seats with people who would be more supportive of workers and their families than the present incumbents have been,” Thompson says.
The board is responsible for providing legislative and administrative services to Spokane County. It adopts and enacts the budget, establishes expenditures and sets policy.
The commissioners who are stepping down are John Roskelley, a Democrat, who fills the District 1 seat, and Kate McCaslin, a Republican, who represents District 2.
A number of candidates have filed for the positions and the affected Locals are working together to come up with a strategy for winning in November, Thompson adds. “I believe this provides us with the best opportunity to fix things in the short and long term, especially as the Locals are in contract negotiations,” Thompson says.
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CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS between Spokane County government and a coalition of unions — primarily Council 2 Locals — representing some 1,350 workers have been dragging on for 13 months. And still no end is in sight.
Not even the help since March of a mediator from the Public Employment Relations Commission has advanced the negotiations as much as the unions had hoped it would. “There has been some progress, but it has been at a snail’s pace,” says Gordon Smith, Council 2 Staff Representative in Spokane, who is involved in the negotiations.
“We consider this to be a very ugly situation.”
Council 2, with 1,100 County workers and 13 different Locals — representing deputy prosecutors, corrections officers, support staff, road crew and others in a variety of positions — is the largest union involved in the negotiations. Joining Council 2 in the coalition are Local 17, the Public Works Guild and Local 280.
The coalition is concerned about the rapidly approaching deadline of December 31 this year, which marks the end of the automatic 12-month extension of the contract, which technically expired December 31, 2003.
If no agreement has been reached by December 31, the County could try to declare a legally defensible impasse, Smith explains, which would enable it to impose its own contract terms. But such a declaration could not be made if there has been some movement in the talks, however minuscule, he explains. Such movement, although microscopic, is being made, Smith adds.
The main sticking points in the high-stakes negotiations are medical benefits and wages. The County is asking us to make dramatic and sweeping changes to our medical plans,” Smith explains. “They want to modify the plans in a way that would make them more expensive for employees and less costly for them.”
He says the County wants to take what has come to be called “three bites out of the same apple,” Smith explains. The administration seeks to:
- Increase deductibles, co-payments and the amount employees have to meet on prescription drugs. And they want employees to pay a portion of their medical premiums themselves.
- Impose a three-year wage freeze.
- Impose a two-tiered wage and benefits system — one for new hires and one for existing employees. New hires would have less sick leave and would take twice as long to top out on the salary scale. And new hires would have no medical benefits until they have completed their probation.
“That can be seen as a union-busting technique when you have different sets of employees with different benefits working alongside one another,” Smith says.
The coalition has been prepared to accept a reasonable compromise. “We realize that the medical crisis is national and that these are not the best of economic times,” says Smith. “Our own proposals would save them $1.5 million a year.
“We can live with a bite, or a bite-and-a-half, but not three bites. That would unravel years of gains we have made since the 1950s.” The county seems particularly insistent on switching the existing medical insurance plans to the Public Employment Benefits Board (pebb) package of plans, which are the same plans that cover many state employees, Smith says.
He adds that during the negotiations the chief negotiator resigned and the Spokane County ceo also stepped down. In addition, two commissioners on the three-person County Board are not standing for re-election in November (see accompanying box).
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