Anti-labor government finance bill to be heard

The Senate Republican chair Mary Kiffmeyer posted her omnibus supplemental state government finance bill, SF 3764. The majority of the new proposals are targeted at weakening our rights to bargain with our employer, as well as outsourcing IT jobs performed by our members.

Section 1 of the bill requires collective bargaining agreements to be enacted into law before they can take effect. This provision would permit the Legislature to attach anti-labor provisions to our contracts and use them as political bargaining chips by trying to force the governor to sign all of it into law. This is in response to last year’s special session, where the Legislature attached pre-emption to the Minnesota Government Engineers Council contract and the paid parental leave (PPL) MOUs. The bill was vetoed by Gov. Mark Dayton, but both the contract and PPL went into effect because negotiated agreements need only legislative approval.

Section 2 of the omnibus bill requires all health and dental benefits to be approved by the Subcommittee on Employee Relations before it could be agreed to in negotiations. This would not only cause incredible delays in the bargaining process, but directly undermines our rights to negotiate the terms and conditions of employment with our employer.

Sections 16-24 of the bill eliminates MN.IT as an agency and moves some of the responsibilities currently handled by the agency under the purview of a newly-created Division of Information within the Department of Administration. The language also permits state agencies to outsource a bulk of the work currently performed by MN.IT, including service and maintenance to hardware and software components and business applications.

Section 27 eliminates fair share fees contingent on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that public employees shall not be required to pay their fair share of contract bargaining and enforcement.

Click here to urge the state Senate State Government Finance Committee to vote against S.F. 3764.