Collective bargaining fight comes back
INDIANAPOLIS--A bill that would restore collective bargaining rights to state employees passed the House Labor and Employment Committee on 6-4 party-line vote.
Rep. Clyde Kersey, D-Terre Haute, has introduced similar bills during every session since Gov. Mitch Daniels first opted not to re-sign an executive order four years ago that grants workers such bargaining rights.
Before Daniels, a Republican, previous governors Joe Kernan and Frank O’Bannon had renewed the order every year, which was first signed by former Gov. Evan Bayh. All three former leaders were Democrats.
“I feel that everyone has the right [to bargain],” said Kersey, who noted the bill doesn’t force workers to unionize.
In addition, because the Legislature approves state salaries, bargaining rights would help improve working conditions and hours, Kersey said.
The proposal, House Bill 1057, also calls for the creation of a public relations board. George Raymond of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce said he believes such a board is not fiscally responsible given the current economic conditions.
“I have not heard a crying need for this kind of board... [and] now is not the time time to be creating new boards and spending additional taxpayer dollars,” said Raymond, the chamber’s vice president for human resources and labor relations.
Before the bill passed to the full House Tuesday, it survived a tabling attempt by the same 6-4 margin.
Committee chair David Niezgodski, D-South Bend, who co-authored the bill, said it was unfair that Daniels could take such rights away solely on his own, but later conceded it also was an individual -- Bayh -- who granted the order in the first place.
“It was four years today that this issue was eliminated by pretty much one person,” he said.
Many concerns about the bill raised by opponents, including the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, the Association of Indiana Counties and the School Boards Association, focused on the possible fiscal impact of such a law.
Frank Bush, the school board’s association executive director, said that 42 school corporations already have such collective bargaining agreements..
“It’s going to be an increase in cost to the local school corporations, its going to be an increase in cost to the state,” Bush said.
Bush said the Legislative Services Agency estimated the proposal would cost $140 million to $210 million just to implement the process for non-certificated personnel from the state’s school corporations.
Bush also disputed earlier testimony from Nancy Papas of the Indiana State Teachers Association that minimized the impact on school corporations' general funds.
Even with a slight fiscal impact, Plainfield Town Manager Rich Carlucci told the panel the bill has the potential to hurt towns like his.
“You can still bleed to death [by] 500 pinpricks,” he said.
Kersey defended the economics of his bill because it only grants worker’s the right to bargain but said the price tag caused by the passage of his proposal won’t be known unless it is put into practice.
“I don’t think the fiscal impact will be that great,” he said.
Those who testified in favor of the bill included representatives from the AFL-CIO and the state’s firefighters, whose representative also spoke on the behalf of the Fraternal Order of Police.
