Tired of having salaries frozen, state employees flock to unions

By The Associated Press

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OLYMPIA — The Legislature's move to allow state workers to bargain for higher pay has prompted the biggest boom in state-employee-union organizing in decades, state and union officials say.

The Washington Federation of State Employees, the largest of the state-employee unions, has grown more than 20 percent since 2002.

After three years of frozen wages and increasing health-care costs, employees are joining unions in hopes that increased clout will mean a better deal come July 1, 2005, when the law passed two years ago mandates a new contract.

While union membership elsewhere in the country dwindles, Washington's unionized work force is growing.

"That was largely due to public-sector organizing, we think," David Groves, a spokesman for the Washington State Labor Council, told The Olympian newspaper.

The council's member unions — including the Washington Federation of State Employees, Washington Public Employees Association (WPEA) and the Service Employees International Local 925 — represent 430,000 workers. "Since collective bargaining went into effect, the federation has put themselves into a total organizing effort," Groves said.

The new law dictates that state employees negotiate with the governor over pay and benefits, which historically have been set unilaterally by the Legislature.

"The reasoning is, the more people they have under representation, the more powerful they'll be at the bargaining table," Groves said.

The federation, which represents about 40,000 public employees in the state, brought in as many as 25 new organizers, said Caroline Klinglesmith, the union's organizing director.

This month, 430 employees of the state parks department switched to the federation from the WPEA.
 
Ranger Don Hall led the campaign for the switch after budget cuts forced him to move and the WPEA aligned itself with a national organization for food and commercial workers

"Many of us were leery of how that process went," said Hall, who now works at Potlatch State Park on Hood Canal. "So when (federation) organizers started coming around, I said I'd definitely be supporting them."

While the federation's size and clout appealed to Hall, not everyone thinks size alone will help win a better deal.

The WPEA recently won over classified workers at Bellevue Community College and 130 employees of the Washington State Lottery.

"It's smaller and we felt we'd get better representation," said Donna Bartley, whose works for the Lottery.

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