The Collective Bargaining Fight (NC Insider)
RALEIGH – Perhaps Harry Reid may think better of the idea.
Or, maybe not.
In late April , the leader of the U.S. Senate re-introduced a bill that would force states to negotiate with unions for police, firefighters and other emergency workers.
The move prompted a flurry of activity from business and municipal government folks back in North Carolina who consider this sort of thing akin to spitting in apple pie and slapping your mama.
North Carolina is one of just two states that specifically bans collective bargaining by state and local government workers. About 32,000 government employees in the state would be affected by the federal legislation.
More importantly, removing the roadblock for union negotiation with one group of public employees would surely lead to calls for lifting the ban for all. The first slip on the slope would have happened.
So these business groups and local governments, which formed something called the Coalition for North Carolina Jobs back in 2006, rolled out a radio ad to try to hold Democratic North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan to her word.
The radio ad actually used Hagan’s words during her 2008 campaign in which she said she would never do anything to undermine the ability of states to determine whether they will allow public employee collective bargaining.
The coalition fears that North Carolina’s ban on public employee collective bargaining is more threatened than ever.
The federal legislation, though, predates Hagan’s time in the U.S. Senate. Similar bills have been filed for nearly a decade without success, with both Democratic and Republican sponsors.
Still, a bill can fail many times. If it succeeds once, it’s law. Local government officials worry that if the legislation becomes law, it would be mean greater payroll costs. That could mean higher taxes.
Business groups simply don’t want to see North Carolina become more union-friendly, not in a state that has had strong right-to-work laws and traditionally been suspicious of unions.
Hagan, in stating her opposition, put her finger on a bigger problem: Why does the federal government have an interest in dictating that states negotiate with their employees? Can a pattern of state and local government dealing unfairly with employees over wages and benefits be demonstrated?
Through executive orders signed by former Gov. Mike Easley and current Gov. Beverly Perdue, groups representing state workers now have the right to at least be consulted as budgets with salaries and benefits are put together. Those rights of consultation stop far short of collective bargaining, and Perdue says she remains opposed.
Business groups and local government may not be happy with the executive orders, but they reflect the times.
North Carolina’s populace, with its influx of transplants more comfortable with unions, is not as hostile toward organized labor as it once was. National control of politics and political parties also has caused Democrats here to increasingly look to labor as an ally, just as they do in other states.
Those trends, though, are quite different than mandates from Washington.
By Scott Mooneyham
June 7, 2010
