Bargaining bill remains bottled up

Labor unions and public employee associations came up big for state House Democrats last year after scandal forced then- House Speaker Jim Black to use his legendary campaign fundraising prowess to pay his legal bills.

One union alone kicked in more than $425,000 to the N.C. Democratic Party, while the teachers' association spent roughly $70,000.

But as the deadline for passing legislation out of either the House or Senate came and went Thursday, left on the table was a bill that would remove the prohibition on collective bargaining for public employees.

It remained stuck in a House judiciary committee even though one of the bill's sponsors, Rep. Dan Blue, a Raleigh Democrat, is the committee's chairman.

James Andrews, president of the N.C. State AFL-CIO, sat dejected as Blue failed to call the bill for a vote in the committee Thursday. Andrews then left to talk with other supporters about what to do next.

"I'm just as lost as everybody, right now," he said.

North Carolina is the least unionized state in the nation and has prohibited collective bargaining for nearly 50 years. Most states allow it.

"Collective bargaining will allow the employer, the state of North Carolina, and the employees to negotiate up front on a fair compensation package," said Dana Cope, executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina.

For decades, leaders of public employee groups did little to try to get the law overturned. But since 2002, SEANC, which claims about 55,000 state employees as members, has been pushing hard for collective bargaining and has become heavily involved in political giving.

Last year, the Service Employees International Union, a partner with SEANC, poured in $427,500 to the N.C. Democratic Party, which is under no restrictions on how much it can receive from contributors or spend on candidates. Political observers said that the union was coming to the rescue of House Democrats in the wake of the Jim Black scandal.

But on Thursday, Blue could not find the votes to get the collective bargaining bill out of his committee. Over the past two weeks, one of those committee members, Rep. Joe Kiser, a Lincoln County Republican who opposes the bill, sat back waiting for Blue to try.

"I knew what the votes were," Kiser said.

Cope said allowing collective bargaining would not give employees the right to strike. Another state law would continue to prohibit that, and SEANC is not fighting it, he said.

Blue said Thursday that he still thinks that his bill is alive. It would require an appropriation to cover the costs of negotiating employee contracts, Blue said, and such bills do not need to pass by the crossover deadline.

Some advocates said they remained optimistic that it could at least get through the House before the session ends. That it has been filed this session for the first time ever, and debated in Blue's committee, shows progress, they say.

But Thursday's lack of movement proved frustrating for some. Chuck Stone, director of North Carolinians for Affordable Health Care, which is affiliated with the state employee and service employee unions, was particularly upset.

"The Iraqi peoples' constitution guarantees the right to collective bargaining, and we can't even get a legislative committee to vote to guarantee that right for the people of North Carolina," Stone said.