Collective bargaining needs common interests

After the 2019 COVID pandemic, a master agreement with a rare sized, long overdue pay increase for Minnesota's public employees passed a statewide vote to accept, not strike. At one polling place, offensively loud and angered doubts were expressed drink in hand, likely due to lack of accessible local polling venues that did not serve. Doubters referred to odors of graft and rot from an unplugged refridgerator in the last minute contract negotiation kitchen at Council 5.  Another low-bid contract poll venue was suspiciously on the employer's premises! No liquor served there, of course.

Such a large raise might never come again, as another huge budget deficit looms, but many complained about the dental quality of this gift horse. Their complaint?  Turns out a major precedent to uphold in state agreements negotiated for AFSCME is not the sheer size of raises, but ideal state worker contracts have to value suvivorship, tenure and seniority, must calibrate wage step progressions to recognize long, sustained effort at maintaining constant, competent public service performance (merit). 

That is exactly how division works, makes sure AFSCME is never AFSCUS. Only when differences get detected do differences matter, and in some Minnesota regions, with different, lower and less stable standards of living, pay issues are vital to survival.  You know where such places in Minnesota are. The low wage places. 

When non-negotiable emergency policies finished emptying state buildings of contagious personnel, last persons exiting passed a sign: "Please turn off the lights, no fools are going to return for scut wages paid here." Then darn near the biggest state worker raise ever gets turned into negotiation incompetence and union graft poison because 'wrong people' got raises. 

There always are workers who must show up to do things A.I. bots cannot do. Not hard to see how it goes. Send away workers with mandatory policy, then mandate they return. Forced long labor marches always thin the payroll ranks.  Minimum-waged state workers exist, are out there in front line, public-facing fields for healing, in facilities for veterans, or corrections, who take risks daily serving public needs, including keeping peace and order, or caring for sufferers of COVID.

Lately there have been more, not less, deadly mortal risks doing jobs related to healthcare directly facing the public. Nurses, doctors, first responders, cops - sleepless, burned-out, on overtime, denied leave, who found themselves either ready to go on strike or on strike, some sleep-deprived, suffering repetitive nightmares about doing things undoable, unable to forget sights that cannot be unseen. Those COVID did not kill went through stresses that drained resilience, damaged human hope and reduced trust in public service and ethical health care.

PELRA blessed public sector employees with same rights as the private sector to be recognized, to have a legit way to strike, giving the same legal ways to act collectively, to picket for raises without bloodshed and loss of workers lives. There is always self-interest in good benefits. When bargained common to all, a pattern of core benefits is defended reliably across multiple bargaining units, less gets given back or eroded by cost-shifting and inflation.  

Some insist PELRA's stability and common-interest multi-unit pattern is not the dog to hunt for them.  In the early dawn of this country, prior to a constitution and it's idea for a paid congress, confederated states employed government toilers as volunteers, with per diem pay and expenses. Back then per diems stood up well, went a long way, due to absence of taxation.

Blow away PELRA's "us", grind to dust "We all do better when we all do better", "me" dogs will hunt again with mercinary predation, piracy, grabbing and taking whatever, whenever fits personal present moments, idea of any knowable common future gone.

Wage grids in Council 5's State Agreement have long had "Salary Range" header labels. How many AFSCME draw fixed salary?

Sometime after 1983, an odd preamble twist sided a supposedly truly mutual agreement. After that, only one party retained the right to correct typo and errata things in the master agreement, it's supplements and letters, and in winter supplement agreements, in facing disasters or unforseen emergent risks. Previousy, labor agreements had a clause that signing the contract waived rights of both parties to evade abiding it's finality as written yet did not distinguish which party may or may not later protest should any unacceptable errors or dealbreaker flaws be found.

Only once, shortly after a world-changing pandemic, did a union signature appear on a winter snow and ice policy for MnDOT District One. 

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