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LEGAL ISSUES -
February '98 Feature Mandatory Collective Bargaining?
All of your organizations are on record as being opposed to passage of a state law mandating collective bargaining for public employees. What is the current law on public employee collective bargaining in Kentucky? Keller: As far as school boards are
concerned, the law permits boards to make their own decision. That means the local
community realty has a voice in that decision, and we think that's exactly the way it
should remain.
How many school districts bargain with teachers or other employees? Keller: There are less than 20 of the 176 school districts that do. There are actually 11 districts that have a written contract and another eight or nine districts that recognize employee unions.
How many cities engage in collective bargaining? Hackworth: There are at least four cities. Louisville has at least 11 contracts that are negotiated regularly. Paducah, Covington, and Newport are the other cities that I know currently recognize the unions and have collective bargaining.
What are your principle objections to a state law requiring collective bargaining for public employees? Hackworth: The foremost objection is that it would be another mandate by state government with costs attached. A great deal of time and energy will be expended by local officials. It's a case of state government setting the priorities for local government and where their money goes. Certainly, if the local community believes it's in the best interests of the city to recognize employee unions, then they can elect people who will do that. Second, we don't really see a need for it. Most of our cities that would be impacted by this, which are first-class cities down through fourth-class cities and urban county governments, have fairly sophisticated personnel policies. They already operate in a way that is more protective of their employees than many collective bargaining agreements in the communities that have them. There is already the Police Officer's Bill of Rights and laws requiring firefighters to work one 24-hour shift and then be off 48 hours. So we don't really see how public employees are going to benefit. On the economic side, many cities are already strapped. There's limited potential for growth in wages in most of our cities. Wages make up the largest part of what cities pay out, so in the large part, taxes at the local level are going to pay wages. How can you be fair when you negotiate a large contract with one group unless you look at your other employees and increase their wages, too? Cities really don't have that kind of money. I don't know how they would deal with it other than to cut other programs and priorities. There are already competitive pressures on wages. Large communities compete for employees all the time. When you took at what already exists in terms of local law and the marketplace, we just don't see the need for mandated collective bargaining. Keller: We do not want to see our education dollars diverted to negotiators, arbitrators, and attorneys and away from programs for students. We want to see education policy controlled by parents and the public rather than by national union agendas. There are good reasons why public education has historically been a local government service. Public education is in the business of helping families educate their children and that is a service that must be governed close to the people.
Many private sector employees are unionized and bargain with employers. What is the difference in private collective bargaining and public employee bargaining? Sheehy: People who work for the public are servants of the public and work under policies of elected officials. In the public sector we are distributing services paid for by tax dollars. Tax dollars are always going to be limited. The reasons for collective bargaining in the private sector don't transfer to government because government does not run on profits which, theoretically, can always increase as a result of better and more efficient production and distribution. The questions to ask are, "Does collective bargaining give the public better services or a bigger tax bill? Does collective bargaining result in a loss of control by taxpayers over their tax dollars and public policy?" Maggard: Another point is that competition and market forces in the private sector play an important part in determining what wages and benefits are reasonable and in pressuring private enterprise to operate efficiently and with quality. Government services are a monopoly, so there is less connection between wages and benefits and the incentive to operate efficiently and with quality.
The Farm Bureau represents some of Kentucky's most independent business people. What is the Farm Bureau's interest in public employee collective bargaining? Crawford: We've long supported reasonable and fair compensation for teachers, firefighters, and law enforcement personnel. However, as the tax pie continues to get smaller and there are more and more demands for services from government entities, there is more stress on the available revenue. We would hope that salary demands could be met on a local level. We support local school districts and local governments making their own decisions as opposed to state-mandated collective bargaining. We believe that the people on a local level know best what they can and should afford for their school district and other public employees. And we think it's important that those decisions continue to be made on that level.
David, you have said that diversion of staff time and finances from educational programs is a concern in local school districts. From what you know about collective bargaining in other states, is this diversion of resources likely to occur? Keller: It's certain to occur. Every neighboring state we've surveyed has shown a significant cost for collective bargaining. Those are direct costs and staff time costs. The low end is a small district in Tennessee of $10,000, not including staff time, to a high of $22,000 in large districts in Indiana and $35,000 in Illinois. In addition to the direct costs there's also a question of focus. It's hard to focus on instruction, when you have both administrators and teachers who are spending hours of their time in a bargaining process, being confronted with each other across the table and then trying to go back and work as a team to provide education. You put those two things together and you just know that nothing in the mandated bargaining process is going to I improve what happens for kids. The bottom tine is taxpayers get much less of what they're paying for and end up paying more for less.
In Kentucky cities that now bargain with employees, do we have indications about the cost of collective bargaining to local city governments? Hackworth: There are costs, but they are really hard to quantify. Most cities have legal personnel costs, but they won't have the costs of negotiations broken out separately. For example, the city of Louisville hires people full-time to work on these issues. They've got a fairly significant cost in negotiating up to 11 union contracts. Even though that's more cost than most cities would have, there's no doubt cities would have to pay for legal representation, administrative and other costs to negotiate these contracts. Under current law, most cities have personnel policies that involve treating every employee basically the same. They all have the same benefit packages, they all have the same hearings if there are disciplinary procedures. Under these collective bargaining agreements, you could have three or four different kinds of arrangements, depending on whether you're dealing with the police, fire department or public works department. All of these different arrangements would take someone who knows those agreements very well and someone who would work specifically with those agreements. My guess is that city managers and administrators would want to have someone in place who is very sophisticated in those areas. That would mean additional personnel costs. The time it would take for elected officials to negotiate those issues is time away from other activities, and that's an indirect cost.
Those of you who have experience with collective bargaining in the private sector understand how bargaining affects management/employee relations. Could you give us a perspective on how you see that transferring to local governments and public employees? Sheehy: It has been well documented that the adversarial nature between management and labor is actually one of the tools that is used to encourage an edge for the collective bargaining unit. It is difficult to believe that by inserting this potentially negative environment that the community will benefit. Once bargaining is mandated, elected public officials have less of a say. The historically adversarial relationships could be detrimental to the whole of public service. Maggard: We also risk that qualified citizens will be less interested in running for public office because of the additional time requirements and the possibility that a public official's home or business could be targeted by the union. We don't need to do anything that discourages qualified citizens from running for office.
From the viewpoint of the citizen/taxpayer who depends on government services, do you have concerns about whether public employee bargaining might affect the delivery of services? Crawford: Yes, we do. Work stoppage could be a real detriment to the safety of those rural communities that Farm Bureau represents. If firefighters or law enforcement personnel or even teachers were just to decide that they would not perform their duties, that would leave the community at a great disadvantage. Economics certainly is one big issue. Can the communities afford it? But it's hard to put a dollar figure on safety and on our children's education if these groups decided that a work stoppage or slowdown was the route they wanted. If people choose public service as their livelihood, then certainly we would all support their being paid well and paid properly, but collective bargaining could affect the communities across the state very negatively.
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