Source: Emmett Rensin and Lucy Schiller, New Republic, February 7, 2017
With the GOP now in full control of the state, 40 years of carefully negotiated agreements are about to be erased. ….
….In 1974, a few years after a public teachers’ strike in which schoolteachers spent 19 hours in jail cells, then–Republican Governor Robert Ray signed the Iowa Public Employment Relations Act into the Iowa Code. The legislation was hyped as a thoughtful balance between employers’ and public unions’ interests. Chapter 20, as the deal came to be called, presented Iowa’s public workers with a trade-off: They lost the right to strike, but won the legal recognition of their unions and their right to collective bargaining. The law outlined mandatory bargaining issues, topics on which employers were required to negotiate, including wages, insurance, overtime, vacation, health and safety. While not entirely satisfying to either party, Chapter 20 has essentially worked: No public sector workers have struck since 1974, and each year, 98 percent of public contracts move forward without binding arbitration.
But now, with the GOP fully in control of the state, a cadre of Republicans have moved to gut Chapter 20, beginning with a bill introduced Tuesday morning that moves both health insurance and supplemental pay from the mandatory to prohibited column. If passed, the bill would bar Iowa public unions from raising these topics in negotiation, thereby allowing public employers to unilaterally impose whatever terms they like. ….
Related:
Iowa Republicans propose sweeping changes to collective bargaining laws, public unions
Source: Brianne Pfannenstiel and William Petroski, Des Moines Register, February 7, 2017
Republican lawmakers on Tuesday proposed sweeping changes to Iowa’s collective bargaining laws that govern the way 184,000 of the state’s teachers, corrections officers and other public sector union workers negotiate for wages, health care and other employment benefits.
Representatives from labor unions across the state filled the Capitol to protest the changes, chanting and holding signs while urging their elected officials to back down from a piece of legislation that faces all but inevitable passage. ….
….. Since gaining control of the House, Senate and governor’s office for the first time in nearly 20 years, Iowa Republicans have called collective bargaining reform one of their top priorities. Both the House and Senate plan to hold subcommittees on the legislation Wednesday, setting it on a course to receive final approval from the governor as early as next week. Gov. Terry Branstad even called an unscheduled afternoon press conference with Lt. Gov Kim Reynolds and Republican legislative leaders to express his support for the bill. ….
…. The bills — House Study Bill 84 and Senate File 213 — also would require unions to go through a certification process ahead of each new contract negotiation. That would require a majority of their members to agree to be represented by union negotiators …..