State Employee Unions Split Over Pay Cuts

When Gov. Pete Wilson asked state employees to help solve the budget problem by taking a 5% pay cut and making other concessions, the proposal was met with anger, derision and firm opposition by all state employee unions except one.

Standing alone was the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., which represents 21,500 prison guards and probation officers.

While other labor groups fought the governor’s proposed salary cut with traditional union tactics--holding strike votes, conducting sickouts, walking informational picket lines, buying time on radio to excoriate Wilson and going to court--leaders of CCPOA accepted the governor’s offer and spoke of teamwork with the Administration.

It is still too early to tell which approach will work, but in the ferociously competitive world of public employee negotiations, the guards union was immediately accused by other unions of selling out and it soon became the target of an insurrection.

The schism has added fuel to the bitter tensions surrounding what many labor lawyers and others consider the most difficult year ever in state labor negotiations.

Never before had a California governor demanded so many concessions from public employee unions. A pay cut was unprecedented, but on top of it came demands by Wilson that state workers pay for health and dental insurance, give up some overtime, and pay for what always had been free parking at state buildings.

What is more, the parties have been operating under a relatively new collective bargaining law that has never really been tested. The law took effect in 1982, but the decade of the ‘80s was marked generally by peaceful labor negotiations. Now, since Wilson made his demands in June, the governor and state employees are pushing their interpretations of the law to the limit. They have been in court, with each decision breaking new legal ground.

Before 1982, state workers’ pay and benefits were determined by the so-called “meet and confer” process. Under that system, the State Personnel Board set pay rates, basing them on factors such as the rate of inflation and money paid for comparable jobs by other employers. And if employees did not like the level of pay, they could go to the Legislature and have it increased. On several occasions, the Legislature overrode Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.’s veto of pay raise bills that the former governor considered too generous.

Under the new system, power has shifted from the Legislature and the personnel board to the governor and the Public Employment Relations Board.

Under the new rules, leaders of the corrections union have gone out of their way to maintain what they describe as a “good relationship” with Wilson. They spent nearly $1 million last year helping elect the governor, getting around contribution limits by forming an independent committee designed to aid Wilson.

“We’re the only state employee organization with a good relationship with the governor,” said Jeffrey D. Thompson, a lobbyist for the prison guards union.

Other union officials, including Gene Preston, general manager of the California State Employees’ Assn., which represents about 78,000 state Civil Service workers, denounced the contract agreement as a sellout.

“They pretty much bought into him,” Preston said of CCPOA’s relationship with Wilson. “We’ve tried to sit down with the governor, wrote him letters, and got no response. We didn’t choose the route we’re going. We believe we were forced into it.”

CSEA and other unions have jumped into the fight with a vengeance. CSEA radio commercials have been relentlessly hammering Wilson, and their publications contain crude cartoons that portray the governor as a vampire preying on state workers. CSEA and a coalition of nine collective bargaining groups took Wilson to court and for months have threatened strikes and job actions.

Wilson, who gained a reputation as being tough on public employee unions when he was mayor of San Diego, came on strong from the beginning and has not backed down. On the heels of two years of huge deficits and a $55.7-billion budget that calls for a reduction of $351 million in workers’ compensation, Wilson demanded a 5% pay cut by all state workers and asked them to pay for increases in health and dental benefits, parking and other previously free benefits. Wilson said that the only alternative to the pay cut was to lay off large numbers of state employees.

When everything is added up, union leaders said some employees would face a reduction in their paychecks of 15% or more.

The governor was able to order political appointees, managers and supervisors--as well as himself--to accept the pay cut because they were not covered by collective bargaining rules, but he was forced into negotiations with union officials representing more than 200,000 state employees.

The decision to fight the cuts was almost unanimous by the 21 collective bargaining groups representing state workers.

Kathy Widing, business agent for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union, said: “There was never a deal on the table that we could have taken to our members and recommend that they support it.”

Most union officials concluded that the Wilson package went well beyond the savings necessary to meet the budget, pointing to such things as nearly 30,000 vacancies expected to develop through attrition. They believe that Wilson is trying to destroy their unions.

Wilson Administration officials and unions began talking during the summer, with neither side budging. Most recently, the Administration broke off talks with two of the 21 bargaining groups--the 1,800-member California Assn. of Professional Scientists and the 4,700-member California Assn. of Highway Patrolmen--and announced that they would try to force implementation of the wage and benefit reductions. That move has been temporarily blocked in court.

CCPOA leaders met with the governor and came away from the meeting convinced that the budget crisis was real and that the chief executive’s resolve was unshakable. Rather than get involved in a long, drawn-out fight, they sat down with Administration officials, worked out the best deal they could, and signed the tentative contract in September.

At the time, Wilson applauded the contract, saying that it would reduce the payroll by $35 million and save 1,000 jobs. But the celebration was short-lived.

Other unions, fearing that it would set a precedent, successfully lobbied Democrats in the Assembly to block legislation to ratify the agreement. After that setback, the CSEA began working on individual guards, and now there is so much opposition to the contract within the union that even CCPOA officials believe that it will be turned down when voting concludes Nov. 18.

As if CCPOA leaders did not have enough troubles, a group of dissident prison guards plans to begin circulating petitions to decertify the peace officers association and replace it with a new union. Other unions have gone on the attack, accusing CCPOA leaders of undermining their bargaining position and selling out to Wilson.

Even so, CCPOA leaders believe that their approach is best. The guiding philosophy, outlined in a recent bulletin, is that it is “better to maintain a constructive relationship in bad times, so the good times can be even better.”

“We have a whole different theory,” Thompson said. “We adopted a political model for our union, as opposed to an adversarial model. That’s because we’re in the public sector. It is a tax-supported system, driven by politics. The classic union mentality doesn’t work in the public sector.”

Thompson said CCPOA’s philosophy is backed by a succession of favorable contracts that have given them higher salary increases and better benefits than any other group of employees. Corrections officers’ salaries increased 24% between 1988 and 1991, Thompson said.

When the choice came down to layoffs versus a pay cut, Thompson said the decision was simple. With state prisons bursting--more than 100,000 prisoners are being crowded into a system designed for 60,000--and with the lines of corrections officers stretched thin, CCPOA leaders did not want to risk layoffs.

Thompson noted that 500 state employees have been given pink slips, with many more layoffs scheduled. He said other unions “are willing to kick people out of their jobs so they can maintain their current salary level. We don’t have that luxury. We need to keep as many officers on the line as possible.”

As for CCPOA’s expectations that their cooperation this year will pay off in future years, James Lee, a spokesman for Wilson, said: “I think that is a given. Do you think this governor is going to be motivated by personal attacks versus a union that is willing to work with the Administration to forestall layoffs?”

In the face of continued resistance by unions, the Administration is threatening to take away bereavement leave, the three days off they now get when a family member dies, and place stiffer limits on sick-leave days and vacation time that can be accrued from one year to the next. Under the proposal, state employees would not be credited with Christmas as a holiday if it falls on a Saturday.

John Grant, a biologist in Long Beach with the Department of Fish and Game, believes, along with other union members, that Wilson has a much broader political agenda. They believe that he wants to shore up his credentials with conservative Republicans and be able to say he beat the public employee unions.

“The governor wants to say: ‘I got a 5% cut out of state employees.’ It has nothing to do with reality. He doesn’t care about state employees. He wants to make a point,” Grant said.