Employee Unions

Three of five unions representing Harford County schools employees have agreed to a contract change that would allow for the $1,250 bonuses proposed by County Executive Daniel R. Craig earlier this month. Craig presented legislation to the County Council to approve, giving all county employees a check for $625 in December and a second check the last week of June. The County Council will hear public testimony and is expected to make a decision Dec. 6. The Board of Education has to change existing contracts with five employee unions to distribute the bonuses, if the council approves the measure.

SECU, Maryland's largest state-chartered credit union, announced Tuesday that it will acquire Anne Arundel County Employees Federal Credit Union. The proposed merger — with SECU as the surviving entity — would expand banking services and access to AACE FCU, which has 14,000 members and $81 million in assets, the financial cooperatives said. The Anne Arundel County employees credit union joins the larger entity, which has over 225,000 members and $2.26 billion in assets.

Anne Arundel County has reached agreements with all five employee unions whose contracts were the focal point of last spring's budget debate. "Thank God," said Councilman Edward R. Reilly, a Crofton Republican. "It was a long and arduous journey to arrive here." The last of the one-year contracts was ratified Thursday by the county firefighters union. "We're not happy with it," said Keith Wright, the president of the county firefighters union. "If we had been treated differently ... we might have a different opinion of ending up in the same place.

Members of a union for Harford County educators have accepted an agreement with the school system that will allow members to accept a one-time bonus that had been held up for months over a disagreement with County Executive David R. Craig. Nearly 2,000 Harford government employees received the first half of the $1,250 bonus in December and expect the remaining money in June. But the teachers union rejected the offer, saying Craig did should have run the offer by union and school board first.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening has dropped a proposal to sharply increase how much state employees pay for health care, but the administration is holding firm to 2 percent cost-of-living pay raises. Under a tentative deal reached this week with the union representing about 5,000 state professional employees, workers would receive 2 percent cost-of-living adjustments - but not until May 2003, 10 months after the contract goes into effect. The largest state union - representing 35,000 other Maryland workers - is still negotiating.

Maryland state workers are poised to claim a share of the state's nearly $1 billion surplus in the form of an 8 percent pay raise over the next two years. The Glendening administration and three state employee unions settled on that figure yesterday in collective bargaining talks covering about 35,000 employees. The tentative agreements call for 4 percent raises for each of the next two years. While the agreements cover only union-represented workers, they are virtually certain to set the pattern for the state's entire work force of 70,000.

Carroll County teachers and other school employees will be mailing in ballots over the next month -- making the tough choice between a salary freeze and deep cuts to classroom programs.The executive committees of all five school employee unions accepted new contract terms Friday, giving back a 3 percent raise and all increments they negotiated in a two-year contract last year.Leaders say they are resigned to the need for the wage concessions. They expect the pact to be ratified but also predict a significant number of "no" votes by teachers and other employees.

Negotiations between the Carroll County Board of Education and five employee unions are taking longer than anyone had expected.Both sides have agreed not to comment on the negotiations, which are due to resume today, but school board President Joseph D. Mish Jr. acknowledged yesterday they are not going well."

Anne Arundel County has reached agreements with two more of its employee unions, approving pay raises, county officials announced Friday. AFSCME Local 2563, which represents administrative and support workers, and the sheriff's deputies union ratified three-year contracts last week, county officials said. That means the county has announced new agreements with three of its 10 employee unions. All union contracts expire before the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. The new agreements are subject to funding approval from the County Council.

Anne Arundel County teachers will learn today whether the school board intends to follow the County Council's lead and lift pay freezes imposed by County Executive Janet S. Owens. The day after the council defeated a pay freeze for public safety union members, a few hundred teachers held a rally yesterday in rainy Annapolis to protest, among other issues, the proposed freeze on their salaries. The rally capped a month-old "work-to-rule" job action at more than half the county's 117 schools, where teachers have been working the minimum hours required by their contracts.

Three of five unions representing Harford County schools employees have agreed to a contract change that would allow for the $1,250 bonuses proposed by County Executive Daniel R. Craig earlier this month. Craig presented legislation to the County Council to approve, giving all county employees a check for $625 in December and a second check the last week of June. The County Council will hear public testimony and is expected to make a decision Dec. 6. The Board of Education has to change existing contracts with five employee unions to distribute the bonuses, if the council approves the measure.

As a state employee I am irate that my constitutional rights are being violated by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees ("State workers to pay unions," July 5). I wouldn't be so angry if the non-union member fee wasn't just $4 less than the dues for union members. I assumed the fee would be something around $5 per pay period. I believe the fee was intentionally set high to increase union membership, which will increase Democratic support. I just mailed a voter registration card to change my party affiliation to Republican from Democrat.

With freedom on our minds as we celebrate the 4th of July, Maryland's state employees will nevertheless be experiencing a diminution of their freedoms. On July 1, the state will begin withholding an "agency fee" from all state employees, except those who work in higher education, as a result of legislation requested by the O'Malley administration authorizing state workers' unions to negotiate with the administration the collection of service fees from non-members. This despite the fact that two-thirds of state workers do not wish to join the union.

The continuing standoff in Wisconsin between Gov. Scott Walker and Democrats in the legislature over his plan to sharply curtail state employees' collective bargaining rights has ignited a fierce debate about the value of public sector unions and the role they have played in the fiscal crises affecting state and local governments nationwide. But a much more low-key dispute in Anne Arundel County demonstrates that the question of whether government unions are good or bad is overly simplistic.

The new Baltimore County Council appears ready to carry out the will of voters, who gave strong support Tuesday to a ballot question giving the council authority to expand labor bargaining rights for more government employees. Four of seven members of the council that will take office Dec. 6 said they would support a bill to amend the county charter to allow a neutral third party to settle contract disputes with a large group of unionized county workers in a practice called binding arbitration.

Spurred by recent service disruptions on MARC trains, the Maryland Transit Administration has extended the hours of its customer call center and put other measures in place to respond to customer concerns. Starting immediately, call center hours will roughly match the hours the commuter rail service operates. The center will remain open from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday "until further notice." The center had closed at 7 p.m. — long before the last MARC trains of the day left their stations.

The Anne Arundel County Council rejected a salary freeze last night for five employee unions, throwing the county's budget off balance and prompting an immediate response from the county executive - a statement saying she will lay off about 35 employees. "Now, I am required to send out the layoff notices and it makes me heartsick to do so," County Executive Janet S. Owens said in a written statement less than an hour after the vote. "It did not have to be this way." Last month, the council unanimously approved an $895 million operating budget for next fiscal year that was based on wage freezes for nearly all county employees.

THE WRITER of the April 4 editorial, "Dark days for public employees," has to be from another planet. His portrayal of the economic status of public employees is far out, to say the least.Take this statement: "Once, private sector working class citizens felt a certain kinship . . . with public employee unions . . . If public unions scored a victory" -- a pay raise -- "they considered it a victory for working people everywhere." Hogwash! For many years public employees were generally looked upon as drones serving at the pleasure of political bosses.

The largest state employees union balked yesterday at a proposal from Gov. Martin O'Malley that its members take up to five unpaid leave days as a cost-saving measure to help close a budget shortfall. "We would like to see a plan without furloughs," said Patrick Moran, Maryland director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which presented the administration a separate proposal. "Otherwise, people who depend on state services are going to come in on a given day and are going to find no one there.