Better bargaining structure follows formation of AFT, AFSCME team in Kansas

A new day has dawned—literally—for state employees in Kansas, who can now look to the horizon and see better wages, a greater role in workplace decision-making, and a louder voice in the Legislature where all things relating to their jobs, salaries and benefits are fair game.

On May 16, less than two months after the AFT and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) formed the Kansas Organization of State Employees (KOSE), the state's Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) adopted a plan to strengthen union representation and rights for some 14,000 state employees.

The plan consolidates 42 geographically based bargaining units into 16 broad occupational units.

The compression and restructuring of the units is a vast improvement over the fragmented structure, says Steve Porter, director of the AFT Public Employees department, noting that consolidation will enable the union to better negotiate over specific occupational issues.

Moreover, the new system opens up bargaining to salaries, Porter notes. Previously, Kansas's public employee unions could only bargain over working conditions.

Under the plan approved by PERB, KOSE is automatically recognized as the certified bargaining agent for six of the 16 units. KOSE's six units, which collectively represent more than 10,250 workers, are: maintenance, trades and technical; administrative support; health and human care non-professional; social services and counseling; protective services; and law enforcement investigators.

The consolidation and restructuring was proposed by Gov. Kathleen
Sebelius in March to facilitate improved employee-management relations. The right of state employee union representation is inherent in Kansas statute, and those rights were undermined by the geographically based bargaining unit structure, which impeded unions' ability to address occupation-specific issues.

The day before the PERB decision, AFT president Edward J. McElroy and AFSCME president Gerald W. McEntee presented AFT and AFSCME charters to KOSE officers Gerald Raab and Gary Patillo at an AFT executive council meeting at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md.

Both McElroy and McEntee noted that the formation of KOSE is historic. KOSE represents the first merger between AFT and AFSCME. Together, the two unions represent more than 2.8 million workers nationwide.

The merging of the two unions has created "the powerhouse that Kansas [state employees] need," says Patillo, secretary-treasurer of KOSE and a mental health development and disability technician at Osawatomie State Hospital.

"Public employees have always been a political football," says Raab, KOSE president and an environmental technician for the Department of Health and Envi-ronment in Topeka, who wants all KOSE-represented employees to be in the game—active in their union's efforts on their behalf, both in the workplace and at the Legislature.

There's a laundry list of issues employees want and need KOSE to address, say Raab and Patillo. And pay is at the top of the list.

"Twenty-six percent of our state employees qualify for welfare," says Patillo. "The only way to address this is through collective bargaining and legislative action."

Raab knows that some colleagues in state government may be skeptical—that even with the new system it will be business as usual in the workplace. After all, he says, "we have been handcuffed with bargaining."

But the changes mark a first in Raab's 37-year career in Kansas state government.

"State employees are an important resource," he says, "and we need to maintain the workforce to keep Kansas moving forward."

KOSE is the organization through which state employees can unite "for change—for the betterment of themselves and their families," says Patillo.