Contract offers with paltry pay raises and dramatic shifts in health-insurance costs are pushing nearly 30,000 State of Minnesota employees closer to a mid-September strike. Negotiators for AFSCME Council 6, which represents more than 19,000 workers in 65 locals across the state, say they will recommend that members reject the state's current offer and authorize a strike.The Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, which represents 10,500 state workers, is on a parallel path, with negotiators and MAPE's board of directors both recommending strike authorization from members.

Mediated talks between the state and AFSCME broke off Aug. 1, with no new negotiations scheduled. Peter Benner, executive director of Council 6, said at a news conference Aug. 2 that a strike, if authorized by members, would begin Sept. 17. MAPE spokesman Murray Cody said MAPE's timetable would put a strike within a day or two of that date.

Raises trail private sector
Together, AFSCME and MAPE represent more than half the state's employees. An additional 10,000 unionized employees also are awaiting new contracts. "That's an unprecedented number of employees together at this stage of bargaining at the same time," said Don Dinndorf, communications director for Council 6. "Hopefully, the folks representing the state at the negotiating table understand that. If we were to all go out on strike, it would cripple the state."

The state is offering AFSCME members pay raises of 2.5 percent in each of the two years of the contract, Benner said, and a revised health plan that would significantly increase co-payments and other out-of-pocket costs for employees. "The state claims they want to be an 'employer of choice,' " Benner said, "but 2.5 percent and insurance takebacks aren't going to do it." Benner said state employees, who even accepted a wage freeze in 1993, lost ground to inflation during the 1990s and refuse to continue to accept increases that are not on par with those being granted in the private sector.

"We're public employees," he said, "not public servants."

Taking it to the members
The recommendation by AFSCME's negotiating committee to reject the offer now goes to the union's Negotiations Assembly. The more than 400 Assembly delegates are scheduled to meet Aug. 18. Those delegates, who represent local work units across the state, will make their own recommendation before the offer goes to the full membership for a vote.

Membership voting will take place Aug. 27-31, Benner said, and results will be announced Sept. 1. If members authorize a strike, the legally required 10-day notice will be filed Sept. 4.

MAPE is following a similar timetable. Mediated talks ended July 26 with the state presenting a "final" offer that provides annual 2 percent cost-of-living increases and similar changes in health insurance. "We're telling our members that if they don't care about their benefits and wages anymore, they should vote in favor of this contract," said Jim Monroe, executive director of MAPE. MAPE is holding informational meetings at each of its two dozen locals before conducting the actual vote.

Contracts covering Minnesota's unionized public employees expired July 1. Negotiations are behind schedule because of the Legislature's stalemate over a new budget, which lasted more than a month longer than usual and brought Minnesota to the brink of a government shutdown. Now, it looks like the $2.7 million the state says it spent preparing for such a shutdown may not have been in vain.

Far apart on insurance
AFSCME and MAPE both say the state's proposed health insurance revisions would drastically increase co-payments and deductibles for employees, possibly eating up any wage increases. Employees with chronic illnesses or who require a major hospital visit would be hit the hardest, the unions say. In addition, they say, the state plans likely would reduce medical access for many employees, especially at lower-cost clinics and at key clinics outstate.

"One of the major pluses of the current benefit plans is that employees and their family members have a real choice of different doctors and clinics," AFSCME said in a bargaining update. "Unfortunately, the State's proposal does not maintain that affordable choice."

The state is attempting to change its current plan, in which employees pay different premiums for different levels of coverage, to a plan in which all employees pay the same premium but pay higher out-of-pocket costs.

"The majority of our members lose under that option," AFSCME said. "The purpose of insurance is to protect employees and their families when they need medical care not to expose them to thousands of dollars of cost shifting."

This article was written for the Aug. 8, 2001, issue of The Union Advocate newspaper. Used by permission.
The Union Advocate is the official publication of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. E-mail The Advocate at: advocate@mtn.org