Rep. Buddy Wheatley (D-Covington) plans to file legislation this week that, if passed, would allow collective bargaining for all state employees.
“We will give them further voice and value to their work when we give them collective bargaining in the workplace,” Wheatley said.
Kentucky is just one of a handful of states that doesn’t have a statewide collective bargaining bill for public employees. Firefighters in Lexington, Louisville, and the City of Covington metro areas do have collective bargaining. While most police and firefighter organizations don’t use it, they’re not prohibited from having it.
“What happens is, and this is the same with some teacher organizations, they can form a union and ask their employer to bargain with them, but their employer is not compelled to by state law,” Wheatley said.
For example, there are about 50 local chapters of union firefighters. Eight of them have a collective bargaining agreement. If a firefighter group is not compelled to join in on collective bargaining, the city or employer can opt into it on a local level, Wheatley said..
“That is the same for law enforcement and teachers,” Wheatley said.
Collective bargaining works by allowing the organizations to have bargaining to form a union. If they do this, the city then has to sit down and bargain with them.
“There is no other protection of that right for any other public employee,” Wheatley said.
While there isn’t a statewide agreement for all public employees, there is for some groups. There are also several groups in Northern Kentucky.
“In Northern Kentucky, you have Covington Firefighters, Fort Thomas Firefighters, Newport Firefighters, Covington FOP, and the Boone County Educational Association,” Wheatley said.
The Steve Beshear administration opted in to have collective bargaining for state employees, and while some did, there wasn’t a lot. This bill could potentially help the state attract and retain government employees.
“We’re having really, really challenging times for recruiting and retaining our best public employees,” Wheatley said, “and one of the reasons for doing this bill is to further attract employees to our state who want to work in government.
“Unfortunately, government work has been occasionally characterized that the government is bad and something to be wary of,” Wheatley continued. “We have some of the greatest employees, people there are, working for the state of Kentucky.”