Some state workers want out of unions

OLYMPIA – State workers in 10 bargaining units across Washington have filed petitions to leave their unions before their new contracts go into effect and they are required to pay membership dues.

And more workers appear inclined to follow their example.

“In a big picture, it’s not a frightening number. In another context, this is the first year out for the Personnel Reform Act, and that is a bunch of cases,” said Marvin Schurke, executive director of the Public Employment Relations Commission.

The law allowed state workers unions to negotiate for pay for the first time last fall. Most unions agreed to contracts that included the first general pay raise since 2001.

But the agreements also require workers covered by the contracts either to pay union dues or representation fees, under a provision called the “union security clause.”

In the past two weeks, Schurke says decertification petitions have been filed for bargaining units in the Liquor Control Board, Health Care Authority, Department of Retirement Systems, Military Department and Bellevue Community College.

And he says five bargaining units at Washington State University filed this week to decertify the Washington Federation of State Employees as their union. About 200 of the 1,068 workers covered by the pact are federation members.

Workers there were blindsided by the proposed contract’s dues requirement, said WSU clerical worker Mary Katherine Morrill, who is involved in the decertification efforts there. “People feel betrayed.”

While some WSU workers want to join a different union, she said many feel unions are not necessary.

“I feel no need to be represented by a union at all,” Morrill said.

Decertification groups feel the unions slipped the security clause into contracts at the last moment and then rushed to a ratification vote.

Federation spokesman Tim Welch says it’s no secret that union security is a long-term goal.

Unions do not usually allow nonunion members to vote on contracts, he noted. And there was not enough time between negotiations and the ratification deadline to notify everyone about the details.

“In the amount of time we had, we did not have all the names and addresses of all the people in the bargaining unit who were not union members,” Welch said. “So we did the best we could.”

Groups filing for decertification must submit signature cards from 30 percent of the workers in the unit to the Public Employment Relations Commission. If the signatures are valid, employees in the unit can vote on whether to leave the union.

The units seeking decertification represent about 4 percent of the total statewide. Efforts to decertify are under way in other departments, including Ecology and Revenue, but workers there have not filed petitions.

The decertification group in the Department of Social and Health Services plans a rally Tuesday on the Capitol Campus.

Morrill said her group has been in communication with other groups across the state, but there is no formal link.

“We kind of heard the same story over and over and over again,” she said.

A conservative think tank, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, has offered the workers “moral support” in their decertification efforts, said Michael Reitz, a legal analyst for the foundation.

Welch says the decertification efforts are not unexpected.

“We have heard from other states that when you first do this … you get this kind of push-back from groups who think this is a significant change in power,” Welch said.