Here’s a brief run down, the staff will be further briefed at 10 am this morning at a Division and Department Heads meeting room 354 in the City-County Building. From the city.
This bill was just introduced this past Friday. It’s a long and complicated bill of 144 pages. We are still in the process of assessing all the legal and financial implications and will send a more detailed analysis of the bill when ready. But here are some of the major provisions of the bill affecting City employees:
Protective service employees are generally exempt from the provisions of the bill, so collective bargaining rights for police and firefighters would remain essentially as they are now.
The following provisions apply to other employees, unless a collective bargaining agreement with different provisions is in place at the time the bill becomes law:
· The City could pay no more than 88% of the premium for the lowest health insurance plan available to employees. The employee must pay the remainder of the premium. We currently pay up to 105% of the lowest-cost plan. Based on a quick analysis of current rates, this would require employees to pay about $200 more per month for family coverage.
· The City could only pay half of an employee’s combined contribution to the Wisconsin Retirement System. The employee must pay the other half. The City currently pays the entire combined contribution. The half to be paid by employees would amount to about 5.8% of wages.
· Some provisions would affect non-represented employees as early as April 1, 2011.
· The City could only bargain over base wages, and any increase in those wages could not exceed the Consumer Price Index (CPI) unless approved by referendum.
· Public employers could not collect union dues on behalf of the union and members of a union could not be required to pay union dues.
· Future collective bargaining agreements could only last one year and unions would be required to be recertified by a vote of potential members on an annual basis.
· Current prohibitions on the right to strike would remain in the law.
Here’s an interesting comment by the Mayor:
This bill already threatens to put a wedge between unions who are and are not covered by the bill, and between represented and non-represented employees. I don’t want to exacerbate that issue by having differences in the way the City currently treats unionized employees. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that we would be able to treat non-represented employees the same as represented employees. The City has reached agreement with many of our unions on contracts that extend to the end of 2012. We will work to expedite the negotiation of contracts for the unions that have not yet settled. We will also work with labor leaders to extend those contracts that terminate at the end of this year to the end of 2012 in order to achieve parity among all represented City employees.
