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Tentative agreements sometimes get rejected |
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Sunday, 03 August 2008 |
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Politics as Usual by Jim Baron Fire them all!
Incongruous as it might seem, that appears to be the position of rank and file Rhode Islanders to the contract battle between Governor Carcieri and the state employee unions.
Since when did blue-state, blue-collar Rhode Island morph into some redneck, right-to-work backwater where people think workers should take whatever the bosses deign to give them — whether it be low pay, shoddy benefits, or a ration of abuse — and just be thankful to have a job?
That's the whole reason workers form unions — to use the power of their numbers and the value of the work they do to leverage better pay and working conditions at their place of employment. It allows employees to sit eye to eye with employers at the bargaining table, rather than having to go to them on their knees.
If you think this somehow gives unionized workers — yes, even public employees paid with your taxes — something better than you have, perhaps the best answer for you is to join and form a union. How much is it going to help you to reduce the standard of living of the guy filling potholes for DOT, the lady at the desk of the Registry, or the engineer for DEM? Not much. But if you let a tone be set in Rhode Island where there is a race to the bottom in the wages and benefits employers are expected to provide, it is going to hurt you. It is going to hurt you badly.
But callers to the talk shows are nonetheless demanding a “Ronald Reagan moment” from Carcieri where he fires all the state workers, like Reagan did with the air traffic controllers, as though that were a solution to anything.
Council 94 workers were asked to vote on an agreement that, at least for some of them, meant that they would be worse off four years from now than they are right now. How surprising can it be that they voted no to that?
At his press conference on Thursday, Carcieri said he was “genuinely surprised” when Council 94 members rejected the agreement. “I sincerely believe most of the members of Council 94 had no idea what they were voting on,” he said. “I'm not sure they were explained in detail all of the elements of this package and how carefully and thoughtfully it had been worked out.”
On the other hand, Governor, maybe that was all carefully explained to them, maybe they did understand it fully, and maybe they still thought the deal sucked, so they voted overwhelmingly to reject it.
Carcieri says he understands that the rank and file have the right to vote on ratifying the agreement, but he doesn't seem to understand that they have the right to vote no.
Say your boss came to you and said he or she was going to rearrange your benefits so that you will have to pay so much more for health care that it will erase your raises in salary for the next four years? If you had a vote on that proposal, yes or no, which way would you vote. My bet is that you would vote no. But because the Council 94 members said no you are howling for them to be fired? Get real.
If you don't get to cast a vote on such issues where you work the way Council 94 did, then you need a union far more than you need to bust the unions representing state workers.
This situation aggravates the governor's unfortunate tendency to get thickheaded about things and impose “my way or the highway” type ultimatums. He contends that the rejection by the workers means union negotiators were dealing in bad faith or are in the midst of internal struggles.
But there is another possibility. Perhaps the negotiators (and they were negotiators; we'll get to that in a minute) were convinced that, although this deal stunk, it was the best they were going to get.
The message from their constituents was: no it is not good enough; go back and do better.
In collective bargaining, tentative agreements sometimes get rejected. The answer is to go back to the bargaining table. That is what the governor and the unions that haven't ratified the agreement should do.
But Carcieri insists that the offer Council 94 rejected is “the last, best, final offer” and “I don't see any way the terms will get better.” He is willing to go through with arbitration, but points out that arbitration is non-binding, which means it is probably going to be a waste of time and money.
Carcieri can't be painted completely as the bogeyman here.
Even Council 94 Dennis Grilli acknowledged that the governor “could have hit us harder, but he didn't.” As long as Carcieri was acting under the assumption that the state has no contract with Council 94, he could have reduced everyone's salary to minimum wage as California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did (although his fight is with the legislature, not the unions) or he could have pulled the trigger on moves he instead merely held over their heads as threats, such as refusing to deduct union dues from paychecks, or refusing to recognize union officials doing union work on state time.
The governor did show restraint, and for that he should get some credit (though he won't) from the union folk.
It is disingenuous at best for the Council 94 people to assert that the proposed agreement was not the result of negotiations, but were merely discussions. That is just silly. When those discussions resulted in a proposed agreement that was taken back to locals for ratification, they were functionally negotiations. If Council 94 had ratified the settlement and Carcieri came back and said he wanted to change some of its provisions because, after all, those were discussions not negotiations, what do you think the union's response to that would be?
The governor doesn't have to give Council 94 members a deal that they like. Given the state's economic condition, they probably aren't going to like any deal. But the nature of collective bargaining being what it is, he has to give them a deal they can accept.
Negotiations and compromise, not ultimatums and lawsuits, are the way this situation is going to be resolved.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 16 August 2008 )
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