Public-sector employees around Iowa cast an overwhelming 93 percent yes vote in recent union recertification elections, the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) announced Wednesday, but four bargaining units within Dallas County were among the 32 statewide to reject union representation.
Officers of the Perry Police Department, represented by Teamsters Local 238, and employees in the Perry Public Works Department and Perry Public Library, both units represented by Iowa Council 61 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), affirmed their desire for continued union representation.
The unions represent 34 employees of the city of Perry. The Iowa Legislature passed new collective bargaining laws that took effect this year, setting a much higher bar for public-sector unions to maintain authorization. Unions must now recertify every time they enter new contract negotiations, normally every two or three years.
Perry City Administrator Sven Peterson predicted the state’s new collective bargaining laws will have little impact on labor relations with city employees.
“It’s disappointing that the legislature would curtail collective bargaining rights like that,” Peterson said, “but from the local level, we’re acting like it’s business as usual. The city of Perry truly values its employees, as you could see at yesterday’s Safety and Employee Appreciation Day. We’re a family. We’d never stab each other in the back.”
City Finance Officer Susie Moorhead echoed Peterson’s attitude toward union workers.
“We’re all in this together,” Moorhead said. Relations between management and labor do not seem particularly adversarial in Perry.
“In public service as a whole,” Peterson said, “at least in Perry’s case, benefits are a pretty good employee attraction point. We have a pretty good benefits package between IPERS and our health insurance, and that’s something we can put out there and attract good employees and retain good employees. It doesn’t do us any good to slash benefits and undermine the integrity of what we’re doing here with our employees.”
While Perry’s bargaining units stuck with the union, three of the seven units for public employees of Dallas County rejected continued union representation. Opting out were workers in the Community Services Department, the Secondary Roads Department’s technical section and the courthouse bargaining unit, which included employees in the auditor’s, recorder’s and treasurer’s offices.
The four Community Services employees withdrew from their union arrangements even before this month’s recertification election.
“Community Services had become very small because of case management closing earlier this year,” said Dallas County Human Resources Director Erin Freeman, “so only four employees remained in that contract. They effectively opted out of even going through that process, knowing they were all intending to vote no.”
Freeman said the nine people in the Secondary Roads office unit, consisting of office personnel, the roadside biologist assistant and the mechanics, voted to decertify as well as the 20 workers in the courthouse unit.
Under the new law, workers voting to decertify are barred from all union representation for two years. Jon Thomas, union representative for Teamsters Local 238, which represented the county workers, said the union will probably not approach the employees in two years and solicit their recertification.
“They know where to find us if they’re interested,” said Thomas, who characterized the statewide election results as holding “no surprises.”
“Overall, we saw solid statewide union support among public employees,” he said. Under the new laws, not only must public-sector unions hold a recertification election with every a new contract negotiation, but they must also win approval from a majority of all employees covered under their contracts and not simply a majority of those who vote.
Employees who do not vote are considered to have voted no.
“If our state legislators had it this hard, where they need 50 percent plus one in order to win an election, you’d never see another quorum in the capitol,” Thomas said.
He said the unions have 10 days to contest the election before PERB meets to formally decertify the unions.
The two other Teamster units representing Dallas County employees, the 24-member Secondary Roads Department and the 54-member Sheriff’s office, voted by large margins to recertify, as did the unionized workers in the Dallas County EMS and the Dallas County Attorney’s office.
Police, firefighters and public-works employees in Urbandale and West Des Moines also voted yes, but West Des Moines Public Library workers voted to decertify their Teamster representation.
The two-person unit in Woodward, represented by the International Union of Operating Engineers, voted to stick with the union, and the 184 Des Moines Area Community College workers also supported union representation.
