After five years of behaving like the well-modulated chorus to John Hickenlooper’s mayoral authority, the Denver City Council appears to be anxious to sing solo. Unfortunately, rather than examining Denver’s strong-mayor city charter to determine where their real power might rest, some are succumbing to noise emanating from a chronic squeaky wheel: the pressure by labor unions to organize city employees.
I hope the legal but entirely inappropriate behind-closed-doors meeting with organizers at DIA convened by councilmen Chris Nevitt, Paul Lopez and Doug Linkhart isn’t a harbinger of things to come. It’s critical for public officials to conduct the public’s business in public. And, if any member of the council thinks he has the authority to grant collective bargaining and binding arbitration to 7,500 city employees without going to a vote of the people (as Teamster’s local organizer Ed Bagwell insists), he or she needs to spend some serious time with the city attorney and read the charter!
Ed Bagwell is directing efforts to unionize the city employees covered by Denver’s independent Career Service Authority. Later this month, the union plans to conduct an employee petition drive, believing employees aren’t satisfied with the salaries, benefits and protections afforded by the CSA. Currently less than 10 percent of those employees are union members — perhaps for good reason.
• The average salary for a CSA employee is more than $50,000 per year, and the benefits add approximately 30 percent, or $15,000, per year.
• CSA employees are paid based on independent prevailing wage surveys and enjoy ample (and free) rights and protections regarding discipline and job security. Union dues can be costly and are not optional.
• Denver’s sick and vacation benefits and accrual policy is substantially greater than the region’s median, mode or average, according to Mountain States Employer’s Council data.
According to the MSEC, average maximum vacation accrual is 120 hours, regardless of total years worked. By contrast, after 10 years of service, the Denver city employee can accrue up to 336 hours, paid out at full salary upon separation or retirement.
Payout to CSA employees for unused sick time is equally generous, compared to regional public and private employees. According to MSEC surveys, the median number of paid sick days is six or seven annually. Denver employees are paid for a maximum of 12 per year. Upon retirement or separation, the median payout ceiling totals 53 to 57 unused days. For a Denver city employee, the allowable payout tops at 120 days — more than twice the regional median.
Career Service employees were cranky in 2003 and 2004 when decreased revenues and voter approval of Amendment 1A — providing greater flexibility in assessing worker productivity and raises — resulted in changes to the status quo. Health insurance rates rose and for the first time employees had to make a modest contribution to their pension. The result was lower or flat take-home pay and changes in the way merit salary increases could be evaluated.
Nonetheless, in an environment where Colorado’s typical working person is paying more for health care and many union retirees are seeing their pensions shrink or evaporate, Denver’s CSA employees enjoy job security, good wages, excellent benefits and too-generous sick and vacation accruals.
City councilors’ ability to respond to constituents depends on good working relationships with city employees. The council’s decision last October to override the mayor’s veto and put money into across-the-board employee raises rather than fund a more discerning merit pay approach (articulated in 1A) reflects that symbiosis.
However, before responding too quickly to special interest and anecdote, council members ought to consider a much quieter and more powerful constituency: the public interest and the taxpayer.
Susan Barnes-Gelt (bs13@qwest.net) served eight years on the Denver City Council and was an aide to former Denver Mayor Federico Pena.
