State employee bargaining advances

April 2008 - State employee members of MEA-MFT and our sister public employee unions sat down with Governor Brian Schweitzer's representatives for the first pre-budget bargaining session March 19.

Their goal: hammer out an agreement between the unions and the state on state employee pay before the legislature convenes in January 2009.

"The pre-budget process has worked extremely well for our members," said MEA-MFT President Eric Feaver. "It allows the unions and the state to take an agreement to the legislature together and work together to get it passed."

According to MEA-MFT Field Consultant Tom Burgess, the initial bargaining meeting included discussion on the following key items:

Release time: Governor Schweitzer has granted paid release time for bargaining team members. Each local state employee union is entitled to one representative and one alternate.

"Scenery tax": The governor's pay task force plans to recommend discontinuing the 15 percent market reduction often referred to as the "scenery tax." Burgess said this is "a big step forward." In the past, he said, when state officials used national data surveys to calculate the market rate for state salaries, they would reduce figures by 15 percent before applying them to jobs in Montana, arguing that it is cheaper to live here than in other states.

The end result was less than a true market pay system. "We've been fighting that for years," Burgess said. "It's not cheaper in Montana, and the so-called scenery tax must go."

Market-based pay: The governor's pay task force also made recommendations on the definition of "market" in establishing market-based pay. (The state now uses a market-based pay system, after years of urging by MEA-MFT and other unions. This means the state takes into account pay scales for similar jobs in other states and private industry.)

The task force said "market" should be based on data collected from four salary sources: 1) Salary.com, 2) Montana Occupational Employment Statistics, 3) Central States Compensation Association, and 4) a comparison of Montana with its four contiguous states.

No national data will be used in establishing market pay. "This is good news because national data is where the 15 percent discount was applied in past salary surveys," Burgess said. "Salary.com replaces the national data, and it gets updated monthly. In the past, we had to use salary data that was two years old." May 1 is the projected date for publishing the market analysis.

Revenue uncertain: Burgess cautioned that Montana faces a murky revenue picture. "We probably won't fully understand the revenue outlook until late summer or early fall," he said. "Montana is not immune to the economic woes of the rest of the nation. Right now, the economic outlook is not so good. That's the reality."

Next session: The next pre-budget bargaining session will take place May 14, 2008. Questions? Contact Tom Burgess at 442.2123, 800.423.2803, or tburgess@mea-mft.org.

Read previous articles on pre-budget bargaining:

Feb/March 2008