State workers reach 11th-hour deal

Negotiators from the Oregon Department of Administrative Services (DAS) and the Oregon’s largest state workers’ union reached a tentative agreement early in the morning Sunday, June 29 on a new two-year contract covering 17,300 state workers.

DAS negotiates for 32 state agencies represented by Service Employees International Union Local 503, Oregon Public Employees Union. [Several other units of state workers bargain separately, including higher education workers and members of other public employee unions.]

The agreement was a compromise, with the union accepting a two-year wage freeze for all employees, and the state backing off from a proposal to cap employer contributions to the health plan at $665 a month per employee. If members vote to approve the contract, health benefits would continue to be fully paid with no changes in benefits or co-pays.

Employees would get no cost-of-living or step increases under the wage freeze, but would receive a one-time “workload adjustment” payment of $350 in the second year. That payment is an acknowledgement that public employees’ workload has increased due to successive layoffs, said Local 503 spokesperson Janet Szliske. As many as 1,000 state workers have been bumped from their jobs, union leaders report, and those who remain often must try to do the work of those eliminated positions.

The state also made concessions on dozens of workplace rights issues that concerned union members, including greater restrictions on contracting out, more favorable lay-off and grievance procedures, and numerous expansions of union rights, including the right to use e-mail at work for union business.

The two sides had been bargaining since December 11, 2002. Union workers were unhappy with the law passed earlier this year to scale back the Public Employee Retirement System, and state negotiators were asking employees to make further sacrifices because of Oregon’s budget woes.

The tentative agreement came two days before the previous contract was set to expire. The union planned to begin picketing then to protest a decision by the State of Oregon to unilaterally impose its final offer on July 1. Union leaders said this would have been the first time the State of Oregon ever imposed a final offer. Instead of picketing, the union held informational meetings about the contract at the 50 sites where pickets had been scheduled.

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.