County leaders were provided with some insights and suggestions Monday as union negotiator, Renee Von Bokern, of Von Bokern & Associates, discussed the new collective bargaining law at Monday’s Carroll County Board of Supervisors’ meeting. She said there is really no particular hurry on taking any actions, but that one of the most important things they can do is think ahead.
Von Bokern told supervisors a significant change to the law is that there will be a retention option the year before a contract expires. For example, in a contract expiring in 2018, sometime between July 1, 2017 and Nov. 30, 2017, employees will vote on retaining or not retaining the bargaining agreement. The structure of the voting is not yet clear. Another major difference is what Von Bokern called a bifurcation in the classification system between public safety and non-public safety employees
The public service designation includes conservation officers who are certified as peace officers, as well as any unit with 30 percent of the staff identified in the public safety category. If a unit fits that ratio, then all employees will be covered under the public safety bargaining rights. For the county, the question becomes whether or not that type of certification is required to perform a specific job. For the public safety group, there is little change in the law.
For non-public safety employees, the bargaining has been reduced to base wages. Nothing else, including insurance or other benefits, can be included in the collective bargaining agreement even if both parties want it included. Von Bokern said the law was reviewed and revised because of an initial interest in updating the 1974 law that laid out the rules of bargaining to preempt strikes. Von Bokern said to this point, there had been little change in the law, with only one alteration made in 2010. She said with Republicans gaining power in the Iowa Legislature, collective bargaining was brought back to the forefront. When it became apparent the laws would be altered, many cities, unions and counties quickly agreed to extend their bargaining agreements out for the next two to three years to let the dust settle and have time to see how the agreement will play out. For the first couple of years, this may be kind of confusing because we have had this as the norm for 40 plus years, Von Bokern said. Now we don’t know what the new norm is, but we will get there, it is just the process of getting to the new norm, and employee handbooks and policies are going to play an important role.
