Oregon Public Employees Union Angles for Higher Pay Raises

By David Steves, The Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore.

Nov. 1–SALEM, Ore. — One of the state’s largest public employees unions is trying to force Gov. Ted Kulongoski to renegotiate its labor contract after seeing the governor deliver pay increases of as much as five times what its own members were getting.

About three quarters of Oregon’s 29,000 unionized state government workers already had ratified their unions’ contracts for cost-of-living raises in each of the next two years that add up to 6.3 percent.

But those ratification votes came to a halt late last month, when Kulongoski announced that all 4,800 state managers were getting bigger raises. For about 4,200 low- and mid-level managers, pay will increase from 9.4 percent to 20.2 percent over two years. And for the state’s 61 agency heads, salaries will grow from 20.3 percent to 32.2 percent by 2009.

“I’ve been doing this work for 33 years and I’ve never had such a huge bomb dropped in the middle of what we were doing to get our contracts ratified,” said Ken Allen, executive director of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 75. It represents about 6,300 state employees.

Since then, Allen and several dozen members of his union protested Kulongoski’s move by walking out on his speech to an Oregon AFL-CIO convention in Seaside.

In a move that goes beyond symbolic protest, all but one of AFSCME’s bargaining units have voted down the state contract in the wake of the managerial pay-raise dust-up. Of AFSCME’s 22 state-government bargaining units, 12 of them, which represent 20 percent of the union’s state-worker members, already had voted to accept the contract. Those now voting it down represent the remaining 80 percent.

Those votes of rebuke for a governor with an on-again, off-again relationship with organized labor are likely now to force Kulongoski’s administration back to the bargaining table. It’s also prodded the governor into less formalized fence mending with the heads of public-employee unions.

Deputy Chief of Staff Chip Terhune said Kulongoski’s office has been in intensive talks with Allen and other top union leaders in recent days.

“There’s becoming a lot of focus and agreement by all parties that we need to get this back to the table and get this resolved,” Terhune said.

He said that “the outline of a process has been agreed upon” that addresses the concerns of the still-to-be-ratified contracts, as well as the unions that already have accepted two-year work agreements.

Whether the outcome will cost more money to sweeten the pay-and-benefits pot for unionized workers “remains to be seen. It very well could,” Terhune said.

Allen said his union’s message to the Kulongoski administration was simple:

“Give us something equitable to what you gave to management,” he said. “We don’t expect to get what they got, but they need to do something more for us.”

Union member Greg Aitken, who works in the Eugene office of the state Department of Environmental Quality, said he did not begrudge managers for their pay raises — but was unhappy with the way the governor was treating rank-and-file workers differently.

“The managers deserve, in most cases, every bit of that raise,” said Aitken, a senior hydro-geologist and a local union steward. “But the issue for us is, why aren’t we being considered as deserving of that pay raise as managers are?”

The governor awarded the raises to all managers except those in the Oregon University System, whose compensation is governed separately by the Oregon Board of Higher Education.

He and his administration said the raises were necessary to ensure that pay and benefits for agency heads and mid-level managers were in line with the marketplace — an important factor both in keeping key positions filled today and in the future, as baby boomers look to retire and state government readies to attract replacement administrators, Terhune said.

“There are innumerable examples of managers that are being recruited by local governments and other interested parties,” Terhune said. “It’s been a real challenge to fill those spots.”

Unlike the state’s union workers and approximately 600 of its lowest-ranking supervisors, 4,300 state managers, going all the way up to the heads of Oregon’s biggest agencies, had a 3 percent cost of living adjustment canceled in 2003 and went without adjustments other than their “step” increases as they climbed the work-experience scale.

As a result of the step and cost-of-living pay adjustments:

–The heads of Oregon’s largest state agencies stand to see their annual pay rise from $135,168 to $178,756, provided they were at the top of their pay grade.

–The salary for an administrator of a mid-size agency, such as the Department of Housing and Community Services, would go from $111,312 to $147,207.

–Annual pay for the head of a smaller board or commission, such as the Mortuary and Cemetery Board, would increase from $71,952 to $95,155.

The new package carries a price tag of $12 million from the general fund and $34 million in all for 2007-09.

Even if Kulongoski manages to satisfy labor unions when it comes to the latest pay raises, another group of critics — Republican lawmakers — remain skeptical.

House Minority Leader Bruce Hanna, R-Roseburg, said he wanted to give the Kulongoski administration the benefit of the doubt — if it can substantiate the need to boost all managers’ pay, with top administrators getting as much as 24 percent more. But so far, Hanna said, the governor and his staff have not made a convincing case.

The state’s market studies used to determine the pay-raise amounts showed that compensation for some groups of state managers was near or even slightly above what their peers in comparable jobs were getting.

But as the studies looked at top agency directors’ compensation, they found the directors were making much less — as little as 64 percent of what they could earn in comparable positions outside state government.

Hanna said the true test — the number of agency heads leaving state employment to work for other public- or private-sector jobs — raised doubt about whether the pay raises were justified.

“If they’re that poorly compensated, then it would only make good sense that you would have an extremely high turnover rate,” said Hanna, whose district includes eastern Lane County.

Hanna said the issue struck a nerve with his constituents, since everyone can relate to the pay-raise issue — but few are familiar with increases such as those being awarded to state managers.

“They’re fairly well versed in it,” he said. “They get a pay increase every year. Maybe it’s 2 1/2 and maybe it’s 3 1/2 percent.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore.

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