CITY LABOR NEGOTIATIONS. DO APPEARANCES MATTER?

Let me put this out there right now: mine is a union household.
I believe unions provide critical support and protection to workers. I support collective bargaining.

But I am also a taxpayer.

With regard to municipalities, I believe in a balance of power and in disinterested, arms-length bargaining.

Why am I talking about this right now?

After conducting regular business during last Tuesday’s Council meeting, Council voted to adjourn to “executive session” (i.e. a closed door, non-public session) for the following purpose: “…to discuss labor negotiations”.

Acting Mayor Chuck Brunello has spent his entire working career---starting in his late teens---working in the Mayfield Heights Service/Park Departments.
Doing that work entails, as it does in Highland Heights, being a member of a union.
In fact until quite recently Brunello served as an officer for his Local bargaining unit.

That got me to wondering: would Brunello be attending the executive session?

The answer was YES.

I spoke briefly to Brunello before he headed off to the labor negotiation discussion.
He told me that he had given up his executive position with his Mayfield Heights Local union bargaining unit after deciding to run for mayor.
He also told me that he had decided not to be involved in the negotiations involving Highland Heights’ Service Department employees but otherwise intended to be actively involved in negotiations involving the city’s other unions.
An attorney he consulted told him it was okay to do that.

The thinking, I assume, is that there is no direct conflict of interest if Brunello, a city employee who benefits from a union contract with an adjoining community, participates in Highland Heights’ labor negotiations involving other municipal unions, other than his own union.

The law may be the law, but appearances matter too.

The reality, in my opinion, is not so simple.

Let me explain.

Typically different unions and/or union bargaining units represent different types of city employees (police, firefighters, service department, etc.). The officers in each bargaining unit participate and/or monitor the labor negotiations impacting their particular group of public employees.

Labor contracts for each employee group usually end up varying to some degree. That makes sense since some issues important to one group of city employees (police officers for example) may have little importance for, or relevance to, another employee group (i.e. service department employees).

But some key terms affect all employees, no matter their individual union affiliation. The biggest of those uniform issues: pay raises.

City labor union bargaining units march pretty much in lock-step when it comes to negotiating yearly raises for their members.

They almost have to. Think about (hypothetically) what would happen if a city gave its firefighters a 2.5% raise but gave only a 1% raise to its police officers.
Can you imagine the howling anger and ongoing labor strife that would result?

No city wants to deal with that.

For the same reason, uniform raises given to union members also typically drive the pay raises given to a city’s non-union employees as well.
https://www.cleveland.com/hillcrest/index.ssf/2015/07/mayfield_heights_council_debat.html

And something else my experience on the Mayfield School Board taught me: unions look at the raises given in other cities to justify their own pay demands.

So although different labor unions may be engaged in collective bargaining with a city, the negotiations aren’t really disconnected.

The pay raises a city agrees to give to one union typically sets the standard for raises given to other unions….and to non-union city employees as well…and may also significantly impact union pay demands in adjacent cities. 

As I said before: The law may be the law, but appearances matter too.

I am confident the city can conduct engaged and productive labor negotiations with its hard-working union employees without Brunello’s active participation.

As of last Tuesday, however, Brunello apparently intended otherwise.