Bargaining Rights Are Rescinded For State Employees, One of Big Labor's Last Strongholds

Several Republican governors are trying to weaken organized labor in the one place it has remained strong: representing public employees.

First-term Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt rescinded collective-bargaining rights for state employees this year, undoing an executive order issued by a Democratic predecessor, and has eliminated a state board overseeing union elections for public employees. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a former Bush White House budget director, overturned an executive order that for 15 years provided collective-bargaining rights for that state's public employees. And Maryland's Robert Ehrlich, backed by the state Supreme Court, suspended a 2% pay increase unions had negotiated for state employees with his predecessor.

The three governors, following earlier moves by Kentucky's Republican governor, Ernie Fletcher, say that their actions are warranted in an environment where state budgets are just beginning to recover from severe stress, and that public employees' unions waste resources and block government restructuring efforts.

"Missouri taxpayers ought to determine how state employees are compensated, not some arbitrary arrangement between a government bureaucrat and a labor union," Mr. Blunt told the Associated Press shortly after his decision. Public-employee union leaders are "just concerned with their own welfare," says Spence Jackson, spokesman for Gov. Blunt. "The governor believes that state employees have the best employer in the world -- the taxpayers of this state."

"That's bull," says Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "We have reached out in almost every state to address [efficiency issues]. Who better knows the problems in the states besides public employees?"

The National Labor Relations Act doesn't give public employees the same rights as private-sector ones to organize unions and engage in collective bargaining, which consists of negotiating issues such as wages, benefits and work conditions. Instead, employees of some states have obtained those rights through state laws or orders issued by the governor.

According to AFSCME, 25 states and the District of Columbia have passed comprehensive public-sector labor-relations laws, extending collective bargaining to public employees at state and local levels; an additional 15 states have passed less sweeping laws, granting limited collective bargaining rights.

Public employees are a source of strength -- and revenue -- for the embattled labor movement. About one in every three of the nation's five million state-government employees is represented by a union, compared with fewer than one in 12 private-sector employees. AFSCME has more members than any other union in the AFL-CIO.

The bitterness between AFSCME and unions that recently quit the AFL-CIO -- including the Service Employees International Union, which has a significant public-employee unit -- is posing a challenge to unions' allies, says former Missouri Democratic state Sen. Ken Jacob, now director of AFSCME Council 72. "The people you'd normally talk to [at the national level] are fighting each other."

Last year, SEIU sparked controversy within organized labor by donating more than $500,000 to the Republican Governors Association, one of several ways that its strategy diverged from some other AFL-CIO unions. Organized labor -- particularly public-employee unions -- generally has been more generous to Democrats. Mr. McEntee excoriated the SEIU for funding an association that backs some antiunion governors, including Gov. Blunt. "You have no control over where the money goes," he says.

"We are a party committee, and we support all the candidates under our party," says Mike Pieper, director of the Republican Governors Association. "We don't have an agenda when it comes to labor in one way or another."

Mr. McEntee rejects claims that AFSCME can't work with Republicans; it is the type of Republicans that matters. "We're going to support moderate Republicans, if we can find them," he says, citing relationships with "fair-minded" Republican former governors such as George Voinovich of Ohio, James R. Thompson of Illinois and Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania. Those governors presided over states that have been union strongholds. Almost half of the nation's 15.5 million union members live in six states: California, New York, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

In states where unions have fewer members and less clout -- especially the 22 states with "right-to-work" laws making it illegal to require workers to join labor unions as a condition of employment -- public-employee unions often find themselves on the defensive these days.

In Missouri, Gov. Blunt, then Missouri's secretary of state, made unions a linchpin of his campaign against Democratic incumbent Bob Holden. He particularly targeted the state's practice of deducting a fee from nonunion workers' paychecks that went to the state employees union, ostensibly to compensate them for the costs of representing them. After he took office, he repealed Mr. Holden's executive order granting collective-bargaining rights, saying that decision should be up to the General Assembly. The new governor said his decision to suspend the board that monitored union elections among state employees should cut costs; duties were shifted to the state's Labor and Industrial Relations Commission, which handles workers' compensation and unemployment-benefit cases. State union officials say they are concerned about the commission's workload.

In Indiana, after Gov. Daniels took office and stripped state employees of collective-bargaining rights, more than 20,000 hospital attendants, welfare case workers, health-care workers, state troopers and clerical workers were affected. He also is backing efforts to privatize nursing services in the corrections department and administrative responsibilities in certain social-service agencies.

In Maryland , unions accused Gov. Ehrlich of circumventing legally mandated agreements for state employees' health care and benefits; courts have sided with him. His administration also has been engaged in dismissals of civil-service personnel that have prompted a probe by state legislators.