Union talks with governor result in forward movement on salaries, healthcare

For the first time in nearly three decades, state employees will receive significant pay increases for two consecutive years, thanks to a wage and benefit plan Montana’s MEA-MFT negotiated with Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

The agreement, which cleared the Legislature in March, provides: 3 percent across-the-board salary increases effective Oct. 1, 2007, and Oct. 1, 2008; appropriates 0.6 percent to state agencies for market progression, performance and competencies; and boosts longevity pay increases to 2 percent from 1.5 percent.

Under the agreement, the state also is increasing its health insurance premium share by $33 a month to $590 effective January 2008, and by $36 a month to $626 effective January 2009.

The total gain for state employees is $105 million, MEA-MFT reports.

In dollar terms, it is the largest economic package state employees have received in more than a decade, says MEA-MFT negotiating team member Beth McKenzie, president of the union’s Department of Revenue local.

"One of the things I hear a lot is that the people who have been here a long time don’t get as much pay as the new people," says negotiating team member Linda Nichols, a licensed addictions counselor at Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, noting that the longevity pay increase "will help—but it is not a cure all."

Negotiations between the governor’s office and the union got under way in April 2006—well in advance of the January 2007 start of the biennial legislative session—and union members ratified the agreement in December. The Schweitzer administration is the third gubernatorial administration that has negotiated pre-budget wage and benefits agreements with the MEA-MFT.

"There was mutual agreement [between the governor’s office and the union] that there has been lost ground, with lots of discussion about what has happened over the last two decades," says MEA-MFT field consultant Tom Burgess, who helped with the bargaining. Union negotiators, he says, "established from the beginning that we need to focus on the base increase. We could have gotten bogged down in a lot of things, but the team was committed to a base increase, and that’s what they did."