Collective bargaining without common interest

After the 2019 COVID pandemic, a master agreement with a rare sized, long overdue pay increase for Minnesota's public employees did pass a vote to accept, following loud and angered doubts, some drunken and desperate, about odors from an unplugged refridgerator in the last minute negotiation kitchen at Council 5.   

Such a raise might never come again, but some stared in dismay at the dental quality of this gift horse. Their complaint?  The most important and principal precedent to uphold in state agreements negotiated for AFSCME is not the sheer size of a raise, no no, not big raises!  Wrong! The ideal contract targets suvivorship, tenure and seniority, calibrates wage step progression by idealizing long, sustained effort at maintaining constant, competent public service performance (merit). 

That is exactly how division works, makes sure AFSCME is never AFSCUS. Only when differences get detected do differences matter, and in some Minnesota regions, with different, lower and less stable standards of living, pay issues are vital to survival.  You know where such places in Minnesota are. The low wage places. 

When non-negotiable emergency policies finished emptying state buildings of contagious personnel, last persons exiting passed a sign: "Please turn off the lights, no fools are going to return for scut wages paid here." Then darn near the biggest state worker raise ever gets turned into negotiation incompetence and union graft poison because the 'wrong people' got raises. 

There always are workers who must show up, and do things AI bots cannot do. Not hard to see how it goes. Send away workers with mandatory policy, then mandate they return. Brilliant! Forced long labor marches always have casualties, leave fewer on the payroll.  Minimum waged state workers exist, are out there in front line, public-facing fields for healing, in facilities for veterans, or corrections, who take risks daily serving public needs, including keeping peace and order, or caring for sufferers of COVID.

Lately there have been more, not less, deadly mortal risks doing jobs related to healthcare directly facing the public. Nurses, doctors, first responders, cops - sleepless, burned-out, on overtime, denied leave, ready to go on strike or on strike, some - God forbid - suicidal. OK, maybe sleep-deprived, suffering repetitive nightmares about doing things undoable, unable to forget sights that cannot be unseen.

PELRA blessed public sector employees with rights won earlier in the private sector to be recognized, to have a legit way to strike, to act collectively for raises without bloodshed and loss of workers lives. There is always a self-interest in good benefits being common to all, when a pattern of core benefits is held reliably across multiple bargaining units, and not given back or eroded by cost-shifting and inflation.  

But some insist PELRA's stability and common-interest multi-unit pattern is not the dog to hunt for them.  In the early dawn of this country, prior to a constitutional idea for a paid congress, confederated states employed government toilers as volunteers and allowed per diem pay on expenses. Not bad, back then per diems stood up well, went a long way in  absence of taxation.

Blow away PELA's "us", grind to dust the idea "We all do better when we all do better", then "me" dogs will hunt again, with mercinary predation, piracy, grabbing and taking whatever, whenever in one's own personal present moment, give up any knowable common future.

Wage grids in Council 5's State Agreement have "Salary Range" labels. How many AFSCME draw fixed salary? Sometime after 1983, an odd preamble twist tipped the mutual of a truly mutual agreement. Do both parties still enjoy an equal, mutual right to correct typo and errata things, in the master agreement, it's supplements and letters, in winter supplement agreements, in facing disasters or unforseen emergent risks?

Only once, shortly after a world-changing pandemic, did a union signature appear on a winter snow and ice policy for MnDOT District One. 

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