Educators, public employees decry collective bargaining changes

GRUNDY CENTER – After the Iowa Legislature passed a highly controversial, top-to-bottom rewrite of the collective bargaining law for public employees earlier this month, local educators and public employees are left wondering what to do next.
The Republican-introduced bill, House File 291, is a union-reform bill that restricts bargaining processes for public safety and non-public safety workers. The bill generally preserves bargaining processes and rights for public safety workers such as law enforcement officers, while heavily restricting those processes and rights for all other public employees.
Before, public employees could negotiate base wages, insurance, retirement systems, vacation, supplemental pay, hours, overtime compensation, and various other items.
Now, public employees – with the exception of public safety workers – are limited to bargaining for base wages only.
Locally, each city or county administration or board of education has the option to include certain ‘permissive topics’ in bargaining, such as: hours, overtime compensation, vacation, seniority and wage increase, and other items, but statewide, there are now items that are illegal to bargain. Some of these items include: insurance, retirement systems, procedures for staff reductions and more.
In general, legislators made the argument for the changes by stating that restrictions to bargaining will save taxpayers money, but many educators have countered that the new law doesn’t actually save any money.
“You can still negotiate salary. The other items that are restricted weren’t financial items, and by saying that this is about money, they might be pulling the wool over some people’s eyes, but it’s really not about saving money,” said Todd Rohler, GCHS science teacher and President of the Grundy Center Education Association.
For the full story, see the March 2 edition of The Grundy Register.