Politics & Government

Personnel Director Predicts City Unions Will De-Certify

Human Resources Director Jim Zwerlein tells aldermen the state budget repair bill "decimated" unions and that employees might be better off financially to be non-represented.

  • Updated 9 a.m. Thursday: Added reaction from an official with the city's police union. 

The city's personnel director dangled an unusual carrot before city workers in arguing why they should vote to decertify their unions next year: the potential for larger raises.

Future annual pay increases would be capped at the consumer price index for union-represented city employees except for police and fire fighters, under the state's budget repair law still being litigated in court.

But that law does not require local governments to cap wage increases for employees who are not represented by unions, city Human Resources Director Jim Zwerlein explained to aldermen on the city's Human Resources and Public Safety Committee Tuesday. 

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Theoretically, the city could approve larger pay raises to non-union staffers. Whether aldermen would actually do that is unknown.

The city traditionally has paid its non-represented employees an across-the-board wage increase plus a merit raise determined by department heads. Ald. Renee Lowerr asked if the city ever would move away from any across-the-board raises and have department heads determine raises for each individual employee.

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Zwerlein said he doubted that would occur because it could cause morale and productivity problems as employees view each as competition rather than team players. 

John Dillon, business agent for the Wisconsin Professional Police Assocation representing Brookfield's police personnel, said he was not surprised to hear pay raises could be an incentive to decertify.

"Unfortunately I believe the statements made by HR Director Jim Zwerlein were 100% accurate," Dillon said.

"The changes made to the collective bargaining laws provided a disincentive for union membership along with obstacles to remain an organized unit," Dillon said.

"But that was the goal of the Republican Party. Destroy the Unions; destroy a major funding provider for the Democratic Party and eliminate your competition!"

Leaders of other city unions could not be reached. 

Pension contributions begin Aug. 26

The committee and the Common Council on Tuesday voted to start requiring pension contributions from non-union-represented employees on Aug. 26, to do so on a pre-tax basis and to create a new Civil Service System grievance procedure to replace collective bargaining protections.

Zwerlein spoke at length about the sweeping changes to labor relations that will give the public sector unilateral power to change pay, benefits and and work rules for employees.

"This law has decimated unions in a very real sense," he told the committee. "It's not expected that a lot of these unions (statewide) are going to survive. The law is really incentivized to disband the union."

Here are ways he said the law will affect Brookfield:

  • The first vote of city workers on whether to certify the continuation of their union or disband it probably won't occur until 2012 or even 2013, Zwerlein said.

Starting this fall, the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission is tasked with overseeing elections by some 30,000 state employees on whether their respective unions should remain in place for the next year. 

About 170,000 municipal, county and school employees also will have to vote annually on whether they want their unions to continue to exist.

The unions will need approval by 51 percent of their represented employees, not 51 percent of those who chose to vote, in order to survive.

Because WERC will be swamped by these "hundreds and hundreds of elections," Zwerlein said, it likely will focus first on those unions whose contracts have expired. Brookfield's union contracts will not expire until Dec. 31, 2012, except for the fire union.

  • The city will continue to collect union dues through payroll deductions and pay them to respective labor organizations until contracts expire Dec. 31, 2012. After that, the unions will have to collect the dues.

  • About 131 non-represented city workers will start contributing 5.8 percent toward their pension contributions on their Aug. 26 paychecks. Currently the city pays 100 percent of both the employee and employer contributions to pension plans. 

This will save the city about $100,000 from Aug. 26 to the end of the 2011, Zwerlein said. In 2012, the savings will be about $390,000.

Excluded will be non-represented police and fire command staff — police and fire chiefs, assistant and deputy chiefs and police captains, lieutenants and sergeants. If they were included, it would save the city about $105,000 in 2011 and $110,000 in 2012, Zwerlein said.

The state biennial budget exempted police and fire managers to avoid wage compression problems, in which the command staff would pay toward their pensions and potentially earn less than their union-represented police officers and firefighters who will not have to pay toward their pensions.

All other union-represented city workers will start contributing to their pensions after their contracts expire Dec. 31, 2012.

  • As soon as next month the city will open contract negotiations with the fire union, whose agreement expires at the end of 2011.

Fire and police unions are exempted from the collective bargaining changes and pension contributions under the budget repair bill.  

The state biennial budget eroded some of that protection: newly hired fire and police personnel will have to start making pension contributions when current union contracts expire.

Also: future police and fire union contracts can not bargain over health plan designs, a huge blow to those workers. That means health insurance co-pays, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums can be unilaterally imposed by the municipality.

However, to get existing fire and police personnel to make pension contributions, the city will have to offer something in exchange during negotiations, under the traditional collective bargaining practices, Zwerlein said.


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