Team MAPE supports MAPE friendly candidates and legislation. Our issue priorities include: achieving fair compensation for state employees, fixing our broken health care system, preventing outsourcing and privatization of state services and protecting our pension and retirement benefits.

Legislative update: Legislature takes aim at your rights, wants to mandate insurance premium hikes

Submitted by mcody on February 2, 2012 - 2:21pm

Legislative update week 2:

Legislature takes aim at your rights, wants to mandate high insurance premiums hikes

The 2012 Minnesota Legislature has picked up where it left off last year, producing multiple attacks on organized labor through anti-labor legislation. While bills that were introduced in 2011 remain alive and could still be passed through committee and their respective legislative bodies, the 2012 Legislature has spent the last week introducing a new flurry of bills that infringe on your rights to collectively bargain, eliminate state jobs and repeal current statutes preventing outsourcing of state employees’ work.

Here are just a few of their recent bill introductions:

H.F. 2070 and S.F. 1607, introduced by Rep. Steve Drazkowski (R-Mazeppa) and Sen. Mike Parry (R-Waseca), prohibit the use of state funds to collect union dues or fair share fees through automatic deductions. This is a direct attack on M.S. 179A, the Public Employee Labor Relations Act (PELRA). The employer could deduct other things like retirement funds, but this bill would seriously handicap public employee unions from collecting dues and being able to provide the necessary services to adequately represent their memberships.
H.F. 2069, introduced by Rep. Drazkowski (R-Waseca), requires state employees to begin paying $90 for their health insurance premium and $270 for dependent coverage. This infringes on our rights to collectively bargain over the terms and conditions of employment. Many MAPE employees have accepted little to no wage increases for many years to maintain their insurance coverage. Such increases being mandated prevent our ability to bargain for a fair contract for all financial matters in our contract.
H.F. 1974, introduced by Rep. Drazkowski (R-Waseca), is another attack on PELRA. It prevents an extension of a collective bargaining agreement beyond the contract’s expiration date even if both sides agree and are engaging in collective bargaining. Furthermore, it prevents any wage increases, step increases or employer insurance contributions after the expiration date.
H.F 1975, introduced by Rep. Drazkowski (R-Waseca), is a bill to repeal all outsourcing protections that exist for state employees in M.S. 16C. This bill would allow a job that a current state employee is doing to be outsourced to the private sector businesses without reason.

The Legislature has also introduced bills that reorganize state agencies and one that even eliminates agencies like Corrections, DEED, Health, Human Rights, Labor and Industry, Minnesota Management and Budget, Revenue, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs.

If the Legislature’s goal to boost big business and diminish organized labor hasn’t been clear, Sen. Dave Thompson (R-Lakeville) held a press conference Thursday morning to announce he has submitted a bill to turn Minnesota into a “right to work” state.

On Wednesday, Rep. Keith Downey (R-Edina) had a hearing to ram his bill through requiring equal pay for public employees to that of the private sector. In support of Rep. Downey’s bill, the Taxpayers Association presented a study showing public employees being compensated above the private sector. However, the study used 41 job classes out of 1,450 that are currently exist today. The Taxpayers Association admitted that more than half of the state’s workforce has no comparable job class in the private sector. They further admitted to not including higher paying jobs such as management and commissioner levels because they are too complex and difficult to compare.

So, this is one week of a legislative session that is sure to be picking up the pace even more following the legislators’ return from their caucus breaks. MAPE will continue to keep people informed on up-to-the-minute legislation by going to www.mape.org and clicking on the links to our Facebook and Twitter pages.