Contract negotiations
preparations enter new phase

By Steve Chamberlain
After three months on the road, meeting with 4,000 members at 55 town meetings, the contract team is winding up the first phase of contract negotiation preparations-collecting information.

Now the team is working with Chief Negotiator Irwin Bluestein (right), PEF leaders, and PEF staff to compile, review, and incorporate the information gathered into the proposals it will bring to the bargaining table.

Contract Team Chair, Dr. Eric Miller (left), said the meetings were beneficial to both the team and the members attending.

For the team, he said it was essential to learn what the issues and priorities of the members were; and for the members, it was important to learn more about the process.

Miller said too many members perceive contract negotiations as not only an important event in the life of PEF, but the only event.

He stated that the meetings provided an opportunity for members to learn that not all issues of concern to them are mandatory subjects of negotiation and that PEF advocates on behalf of our members all the time in many different arenas.

Miller gave the example of retirement issues as having to be addressed in the legislative arena and job title/salary grade concerns as having to be addressed in the Civil Service arena.

He added that many of the specific workplace issues that members raise are best handled in the Labor/Management arena, or in contract enforcement.

Asked what he found most striking after being on the road for three months meeting with so many members, Dr. Miller cited what Chief Negotiator Bluestein calls the "remarkably diverse" make-up of the bargaining unit.

Miller went on further to note that a big obstacle facing PEF is the members' own perception that our diversity is a weakness, rather than a strength. He acknowledged the frustrations of members who sometimes felt isolated among the thousands of different job titles across scores of different agencies.

However, he expressed optimism that we can harness the common bond among the licensed professions and the highly professional scientific and technical job titles represented by PEF.

Dr. Miller was asked what he would recommend members could do to help Chief Negotiator Bluestein and the Contract Team achieve success at the bargaining table.

Miller said he would like to remind members that as public employees the terms and conditions of their employment are determined in a totally political environment with and by politicians.

He quoted Mr. Bluestein by adding that as much, if not more, is accomplished away from the bargaining table as at it.
Mr. Bluestein, he noted, explains that persuasiveness at the bargaining table is enhanced by power away from the bargaining table. That means, he went on, that Mr. Bluestein can't pull a rabbit out of a hat unless we have the power to put the rabbit in the hat for him. So one thing members can do is be politically active, he emphasized.

Make yourself known to your two elected state representatives. Maintain a dialogue with them about who you are, who we are, and what our needs are.

And help empower the organization politically by voluntarily contributing to PEF's political action fund, Miller pleaded. It's just as important to symbolically demonstrate a high rate of membership participation in voluntary contributions to political action as it is to collect money.

Members interested in how to help with PEF's political action program and COPE should contact their Regional Coordinator.For ongoing updates regarding the preparations for negotiations, call the PEF Hotline at 1-800-342-4306 extension 555.