State offers unions a split deal

01/14/2006

Workers idled during shutdown would get half of lost benefits

BY PATRICK SWEENEY
Pioneer Press

More than 8,000 state employees would receive half the pay and vacation time they lost during Minnesota’s partial government shutdown last summer under an offer that two big unions will begin voting on soon.

Leaders of the unions — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees — announced Friday that they had agreed reluctantly to recommend their members accept the offer.

Boards of three smaller unions also will consider the tentative deal.

“Half a loaf, getting something in our members’ pockets, is truly better than nothing,” said Jim Monroe, executive director of MAPE. Monroe and AFSCME leader Eliot Seide blasted Gov. Tim Pawlenty for not agreeing to full back pay for workers caught in the eight-day shutdown.

Employee Relations Commissioner Cal Ludeman called the tentative deal good but imperfect.

Ludeman said officials of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s administration did not want to provide full back pay for time employees did not work during the shutdown. But he said officials realized that few workers who took forced vacations during the shutdown were able to enjoy their time off.

“As an employer, we generally pay for work performed,” Ludeman said. “Yet, we recognize the diminished value of the vacation days that were taken.”

If the unions accept the tentative agreements, they will be sent to the Legislature for ratification, Ludeman said. As part of the deal, the unions promised not to lobby for the Legislature to approve full back pay and restoration of vacation time.

The partial shutdown from July 1 to July 8 occurred after the Republican House majority, a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Senate majority and the Republican governor could not agree on spending bills for a new two-year budget cycle that began July 1.

About half the workers put out of work during the shutdown could blame their situation more directly on Pawlenty. In late May, he vetoed a transportation spending bill the House and Senate had approved narrowly, and lawmakers never passed the measure again.

“The people who were put out of work were pawns in a very nasty and unnecessary political game,” Seide said during a news conference Friday.

“Morale went in the toilet, and I’m speaking mildly, when this happened,” said Mike Buesing, a Department of Transportation employee and union officer.

Several big parts of the new budget were approved before the last budget expired June 30, and employees covered by those parts kept working during the shutdown. A judge ordered the state to continue employing a number of other workers who perform essential jobs.

About 8,300 employees were off work during the shutdown, missing an average of five workdays during the eight-day budget crisis, Ludeman said. Only about 1,000 less-senior workers actually lost pay because they had no vacation or comp-time days to use, he said.

Ludeman said the budgeted cost to the state for restoring half the pay and vacation and comp days is “something over $4 million.” But the actual cost of providing the limited back pay will be only about $380,000, he said.

Ludeman said he will ask lawmakers to approve similar back pay and vacation restoration for nonunion workers idled by the shutdown.

Union leaders said they planned to urge the Legislature to pass a law, similar to those of many other states, that would allow an existing state budget to remain in force while lawmakers and the governor fight over terms of a new one.

“Never again should the citizens of this state and the employees of this state have to pay that kind of price for political gridlock,” Seide said.