“I think it was a very successful year,” says George Myers, president of MPEC, which represents 5,000 scientists, engineers and adminis­trators in about 20 state government departments and agencies.

MPEC, working in conjunction with its AFT state federation, AFT-Maryland, gave lawmakers a reality check: that it was time for pension improvements, that the collective bargaining law was flawed to the disadvantage of the very people it was intended to protect and that state employees’ salaries were falling behind, says Myers.

Union officials note that political pressure due to Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr.’s upcoming bid for re-election in November 2006, combined with more than one dozen highly publicized legislative overrides of worker-friend­ly legislation the governor vetoed in 2005, made the first-term Republican more amenable to voluntarily delivering favorable outcomes on the pension and pay issues.

Under the State Employees’ and Teachers’ Retirement Enhancement Benefit Act of 2006, the defined-benefit pension will be boosted to 54 percent from 42 percent of salary after 30 years of service.

AFT-Maryland lobbyist Pamela Burger says the union’s effort to im­­prove the retirement plans was as­sisted by hard data.

Maryland’s public employees were receiving one of the nation’s lowest pension benefits, which Burger says was “hard [for law­makers] to justify when Maryland is among the wealthiest states” in the nation.

Under the pay deal, state employees making less than $70,000 will receive at least 4 percent more in their paychecks in the coming fiscal year, depending on salary level, made up of a 2 percent step increase and a 2 percent cost-of-living adjustment.

Nevertheless, Gov. Ehrlich, who has effectively refused to negotiate with public employee unions since he took office in January 2003, vetoed the collective bargaining legislation. True to form this year, the Legislature overrode it.

Burger says the veto of the collec­tive bargaining bill and other work­er-friendly legislation “was an oppor­­tunity for the [Democratic-led] Legislature to show who was in charge. They wanted the citizens to see them fighting against the governor on issues that are important to working families,” Burger says.

In addition to requiring the Department of Budget and Management to provide unions with the home addresses and telephone numbers of the state employees they represent, which is central to a union’s ability to organize, educate and mobilize its membership around contract negotiations, the measure makes the State Labor Relations Board an independent unit of state government.

Burger says unions representing public employees joined forces to get the measures approved. “Our efforts really were collaborative,” she says. “We started [lobbying] in September. We had a plan. We worked the plan.”