State Government
News
SEANC Seeks
Collective Bargaining Rights
One
of the most audacious political movements ever seen in North Carolina
was launched last month when the State Employees Association voted to
begin lobbying the General Assembly for collective bargaining rights
and the power to possibly organize strikes. While it’s difficult to
imagine that North Carolina, a right-to-work state with among the
nation’s lowest unionization rates, would grant state workers such
powers, one prominent observer said the movement should be taken
seriously.
“The potential for the state employees to be a very successful
political force is great,” said N.C. FREE Executive Director John
Davis. “Therefore, the business community should take this saber
rattling seriously. They have the raw numbers statewide to be a very
powerful political force.”
Holding its annual convention in Greensboro, the State Employees
Association of North Carolina (SEANC) voted overwhelmingly to pursue
the right to collectively bargain with the state over pay and working
conditions. In a second, more controversial, vote, the roughly 900
delegates attending the three-day convention voted to eliminate a
sentence in SEANC’s bylaws that reads, “In no event shall a strike
or work stoppage be employed by SEANC.” The delegates rejected a
milder move that would have inserted this sentence in the bylaws:
“In no event shall a strike or threat of work stoppage be employed
by SEANC, unless authorized by three-fourths” of the
organization’s board of directors. In a related action, the
convention sought to amend legislation on the books that voids the
payroll deduction of membership dues of organizations that participate
in collective bargaining.
North Carolina has about 120,000 state employees, a category that
excludes school teachers. SEANC represents about 60,000 active and
retired state workers, making it one of the largest voting blocs in
the state. In a dozen or so counties with a concentration of state
facilities — Wake County heads the list — state employees already
wield considerable political influence.
Collective bargaining — by public or private sector groups —
isn’t specifically illegal in North Carolina, but state law makes
any such agreement null and void. General Statute 95-98 reads: “Any
agreement, or contract, between the governing authority of any city,
town, county, or other municipality, or between any agency, unit, or
instrumentality thereof, or between any agency, instrumentality, or
institution of the State of North Carolina and any labor union, trade
union, or labor organization as bargaining agent for any public
employees of such city, town, county or other municipality, or agency
or instrumentality of government, is hereby declared to be against the
public policy of the state, illegal, unlawful, void and of no
effect.”
According to SEANC, North Carolina is the only state in the nation to
explicitly bar collective bargaining agreements, and the law isn’t
likely to be overturned. Two separate federal district courts in North
Carolina have held that the state has no obligation, constitutional or
otherwise, to enter into contracts if it chooses not to.
Strikes by public employees in North Carolina are illegal; workers who
engage in work stoppages can be fired immediately. General Statute
95-98.1 says: “Strikes by public employees are hereby declared
illegal and against the public policy of the state.”
This new, confrontational attitude by SEANC is a reflection of the
leadership style of Executive Director Dana S. Cope, the former N.C.
Department of Labor official who was hired as SEANC’s leader early
last year. Insisting that SEANC’s prior, low-key legislative
lobbying tactics had barely kept state worker salaries abreast of
inflation, he immediately plunged the association into bare-knuckles
politics. To the astonishment of most political observers, SEANC’s
PAC targeted 30 ranking incumbent legislators in last year’s
legislative elections and made campaign contributions of up to $4,000
to many of their challengers.
Among those targeted for defeat by SEANC were Sens. John Kerr
(D-Wayne) and Howard Lee (D-Orange), whose districts include large
concentrations of state employees. SEANC also opposed Senate President
Pro Tem Marc Basnight (D-Dare) and other powerful Senate figures such
as Aaron Plyler (D-Union), Fountain Odom (D-Mecklenburg), Tony Rand
(D-Cumberland) and David Hoyle (D-Gaston). The gambit was
spectacularly unsuccessful; every incumbent targeted for defeat by
SEANC won re-election.
N.C. FREE’s Davis said SEANC apparently has decided that it has
nothing to lose: “It appears to me that they have concluded that the
only way to get what they want is to be aggressive politically. They
are laying it all on the line, saying we know this will upset the
political leadership but we don’t care. In order to rally the troops
politically, you have to have an issue. They are banking on collective
bargaining with binding arbitration to be the rallying cause for
political activism and they have the potential to achieve that
success.”
However, Davis doubts SEANC will get what it wants. “The greater
probability is that they will fail miserably,” he said.
Sen. Hoyle agreed. “It will be over my dead body” before the
General Assembly grants state workers collective bargaining rights, he
said. “We’re not going to pass any laws to allow any group of
people to disrupt the government.”
Hoyle added that he’s puzzled by SEANC dive into hardnosed politics.
“State employees by and large are good people. They are dedicated,
underpaid and underappreciated in many cases. But they have elected
some leadership over there that, well, let’s just say he’s not
held in very high regard by many of my colleagues in the Senate. He
called me a cockroach one time.”
SEANC obviously disagrees. The association recently gave Cope a
three-year contract. —Steve Tuttle
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