ABQ Mayor’s labor ordinance veto stands

ALBUQUERQUE — Albuquerque’s City Council attempted but failed last night to override Mayor Marty Chavez’ veto of a bill that was highly sought by labor.

The bill would have allowed the city’s public employees unions to force binding arbitration in the event that a labor contract negotiation was at an impasse. Currently, because public employee unions aren’t allowed to strike, the city is simply able to impose a contract on their unions.



City Councilor Rey Garduno, who sponsored the bill, said it was needed in order to have equal footing during contract negotiations. “What’s complicated about fair treatment?” he asked.



And his bill co-sponsor, Councilor Debbie O’Malley, said the city clearly does not engage in collective bargaining without the bill and she had strong words about Chavez.

Saying she was disappointed but not surprised, O’Malley said it was clear to her that the Mayor doesn’t support collective bargaining.



Chavez made his case through a message attached to his veto.



The proposed binding arbitration measure would constitute a “substantial” change, he said, which would jeopardize the City’s Labor Management Relations Ordinance. When the state’s labor statute, the Public Employees Bargaining Act (PEBA), was approved and signed into law in 2002, it grandfathered in the City’s labor ordinance so long as the city didn’t make any “substantial” changes to the ordinance.

Chavez claims that introducing binding arbitration as called for in the bill would be “substantial” and cause the city to start being covered by the state’s act.



Consequently, he argued, falling under the PEBA, will cause the city’s budget to be in jeopardy because the state’s act allows economic issues to be subject to binding mandatory arbitration:

Taxpayers would be left powerless in the face of a law which has the potential to break our budget. An outside arbitrator with no accountability to our citizens or the City’s government will make binding determinations that will have a major effect on our operations and budget.

AFSCME’s general counsel, Shane Youtz, said in his comments that the Mayor’s veto message was clearly wrong, that he had misread or misinterpreted PEBA because the Act clearly doesn’t allow economic issues to be decided through arbitration.



Indeed, the impasse resolution provision of the PEBA makes the outcome of the arbitration process subject to Subsection E of the act’s “scope of bargaining” section, which does not allow an arbitration decision to determine economic issues:

…An impasse resolution or an agreement provision by a public employer other than the state or the public schools and an exclusive representative that requires the expenditure of funds shall be contingent upon the specific appropriation of funds by the appropriate governing body and the availability of funds. … An arbitration decision shall not require the reappropriation of funds.

City Councilors in favor of the bill took aim at what they characterized as fear mongering tactics in the veto message.

Garduno chided the Mayor for “scaring everybody to death as though the employees are going to take over the mansion.” The Mayor is trying to make the PEBA into a bogeyman, Garduno said, when it clearly isn’t.



And City Councilor Isaac Benton had particularly strong words about the Mayor’s veto message:

 

This is about fairness between equals. The whole arbitration process is a very professional established fair process. The administration says this is an outside arbitrator with no accountability to city government, but I want to know where the accountability of this mayor is to the city council.

 

The veto message is rife with inaccuracies and red herrings, talk about a hidden message, what’s the hidden message in this veto message?

Benton and other City Councilors, including those who voted against the bill, also expressed outrage that the administration had not given it’s public employees the 3.5 percent pay raises that the City Council had voted unanimously to provide.

Those opposed to the binding arbitration bill suggested this was the reason the Council “was in this position in the first place.” Councilor Sally Mayer had particularly heated words:

I’m really angry. The Council voted 9-0 to give employees 3.5 percent. They are our city’s greatest asset. … I am angry, the Mayor has brought this upon us.

Mayer, who was absent when the bill was passed by the Council, would not cast the sixth vote to over ride the veto, however, saying she did not “believe in binding arbitration.”



The failure of the five Democrats on the Council to persuade one of the four Republicans to help override the veto means the issue will most likely play out in court. Youtz told the Independent that they already have a case working its way through court.

If the City doesn’t want to rectify the problem, he said, it’s only fair for our unions to fall under the PEBA. Youtz said the PEBA grandfathered ordinances that provide for collective bargaining, which the City of Albuquerque clearly does not do. In his public comments, he explained why the City’s approach can not be considered a genuine approach to collective bargaining:

The premise is that we negotiate—but that system only works if both sides have leverage. In the private sector, that leverage is the right to withhold work. In New Mexico, just about everywhere other than Albuquerque, that leverage is the right to go to an outside arbitrator. This keeps both sides honest. The City can currently impose a contract, so they don’t have to be honest.