MGEC Officers and staff have met with the Minnesota Office of Management and Budget (MMB) to set up dates and protocols for the negotiation of the next labor agreement. We share the frustration of working under a contract that has expired while the next one is negotiated, although it is common in public sector negotiations.
The MGEC Bargaining Committee has met several times over the last several months to identify bargaining priorities. Given that MMB reads our member communications such as this one, we prefer a strategy where they don’t know what our asks will be before we get to the bargaining table. We will share what we can.
We expect to sit down formally at the end of August or beginning of September. We are pushing for sooner. We expect to have several bargaining sessions spaced a week or two apart. Typically, the first session is the initial exchange of proposals; each subsequent session responds to the proposals of the last session. We’ve seen extensive, multi-page lists in the past where it seemed like the goal of negotiation was to eliminate proposals more than to find common ground to move forward. In other words, the task was to find ways to say “no” instead of “yes”. Only time will tell if that happens this time, but irrespective of what tactics we see, we will be prepared. Tools available to Minnesota public sector unions are on the table, including mediation and potentially contract arbitration.
For those MGECers who have been around for at least one bargaining cycle, we know that “pattern bargaining” can have a significant impact on what can expect to see – and deal with. Now that a majority of State employees have reached a tentative agreement through the unions that represent the vast majority of state employees – MAPE and AFSCME – we have a strong sense of what that pattern will be. While we recognize that their across-the-board adjustments fall far short of what matching inflations needs to be, we also need to recognize that the large unions were able to stave off changes in how healthcare costs are shared between the employer and union members.
As you’ll recall from previous newsletters, our healthcare is negotiated in a coalition model involving all of the state’s unions. This creates economies of scale by having one set of plans and plan administration instead of individually negotiated plans for each union; that would be vastly more complex and result in more cost. But healthcare expenses in the last 12 months have unexpectedly soared across the board. Spending on GLP-1 weight loss drugs, not even tracked a couple of years ago, have exceeded $50,000,000. Pharmaceutical and hospital costs have risen above forecasted amounts. SEGIP’s initial proposal would have spiked premiums by as much as 160% and out of pocket costs by as much as 67%. The healthcare coalition made the decision to bundle the healthcare negotiations with the “push week” of MAPE and AFSCME, recognizing their joint bargaining power and willingness to strike over healthcare takebacks. What the state proposed – and what MAPE and ACSFME fought back – would have been financially devastating, even for the relatively high wage earners represented by MGEC. Healthcare will likely be an issue that will define our negotiations for the next several years if spending trends continue. We will bargain for any benefit to our members wherever we can.
We will provide much greater detail once the initial proposals are known.