On May 25^th, the three state employee unions filed Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charge against the state of Montana…that is you and I. You can view it by clicking here…read the ULP.  The Unions are claiming that the state employees agreed to a pay freeze in the previous biennium and that in December of 2010 (prior to the 62^nd legislative session) a pay increase was negotiated in good faith. This resulted in House Bill 13 (HB13).

HB13 was heard and voted on multiple times by the house; all five times, it failed. In fact, it was reconsidered once per the Governor’s request. As pointless as I felt it was when we voted to reconsider HB13, we all voted to reconsider it knowing it would fail again.

I feel safe in stating that the republican majority felt that with the current economic struggles the private sector faces, we could not in good conscious give a raise to public employees that currently receive higher pay and benefits then the private sector.  I have received many emails and phone calls from state employees that agree with this.

One problem with the current systems is this; all union contracts in the state are finalized in the December prior to the Legislature arriving in Helena. This equates to telling the Legislature they must allow increases to the budget regardless. In other words, the administration (Governor) has in the past negotiated and controlled the budget by mandating spending requirements. Now that the Legislature has taken a stand that they will not just blanket spend your tax dollars through illegally mandated pay increases, the Unions are taking legal action in hope of convincing a court to support them.

So what might the outcome be? Well the investigator/arbitrator may find there to be no legitimate argument and the matter is dropped unless they take it to the next level – a lawsuit.  If you look at the history of ULP’s a majority of the time the arbitrators find in favor of the union complainants. This could be due to the rather liberal nature of the current administration. If the matter is found to be legitimate, it would probably result in a special session costing Montana Taxpayers perhaps millions to hold a special session, where we will return to Helena and vote down a pay increase! If the matter goes before a Judge and the court finds that, the Legislature must honor the administrations negotiation, then effectively the Unions control Montana’s future and our state constitution is pointless.

One thing to consider is the federal government does not allow unions to exist within their public employees.  There are other states like Virginia, which also do not allow any Unions within the public employee system.

So I must ask; what is the future of Unions in Montana? Will we as citizens continue to allow our great state to be controlled by Unions? Will we support a ‘right to work’ state? Might we be so bold as to demand the elimination of Unions within the State Government? Are we going to follow other states and become victims to Unions pillaging taxpayer’s money?

I would like to hear from you. Please let me know what your thoughts are and if you would support the elimination of this controlling factor from our state government.

PS: If you care to read the Press Release from leadership click here.