AFSCME leader: Branstad plan an ‘all-out assault’ on public employees

Gov. Terry Branstad’s edict imposing a hiring freeze is “an all-out assault – an unwarranted assault – on public employees,” the leader of the state’s largest public employee union said Monday.

Danny Homan, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Iowa Council 61, made his comments after Branstad told reporters that his administration has instructed department and agency heads to “stop the hiring.” About 1,000 state employees have been hired since July 1, and another 500 are in the pipeline. The workers were hired after more than 2,000 workers took advantage of early retirement options during former Gov. Chet Culver’s final year in office.

“The state can’t sustain or support that,” Branstad said of the new hires. “We shouldn’t replace those workers, except those that are critically necessary.”

Homan said Branstad and the governor’s labor adviser, Leon Shearer, relied too heavily on the findings of the Public Interest Institute, a conservative Mount Pleasant-based think tank, that concluded Iowa’s public employees are overpaid when compared with workers in similar private sector positions. That report found that state employees with a bachelor’s degree or better earned an average of $51,700 compared with $35,300 earned by workers in the private sector.

The Des Moines Register reported Monday that an analysis by Iowa State University economist Dave Swenson concluded the opposite, that private sector workers with a bachelor’s degrees earned $58,670 annual, compared with $48,752 for state employees. Advanced degrees further widen the pay gap, according to Swenson, who said that private-sector workers with master’s or higher degrees averaged $82,081, compared with their public-sector counterparts, whose earnings averaged $58,670.

Swenson’s study found that state workers without a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $33,617, slightly more than similarly educated private-sector workers, who earned an average of $31,790.

“Any credible report will show that public employees are underpaid,” Homan said, claiming the Branstad administration is “jacking up the average of public employee sectors by including coaches, doctors and professors,” including University of Iowa head football coach Kirk Ferentz, who is paid $3.6 million of a year. “That’s going to inflate the average.

“The [Shearer] report is a very, very partisan report,” Homan said. “It’s so far off the mark, it is un-credible.”

Homan said the early retirement program under the Culver administration saved the state more money than expected and that Iowa has a nearly $1 billion rainy-day fund to help the state through hard economic times. “There’s no need for Gov. Branstad to be doing this,” Homan said. “It’s a pattern Gov. Branstad showed the last time he was in office, and it looks like it’s a pattern again.”

Branstad said workforce reduction will occur “thoughtfully, on a case-by-case, agency-by-agency basis.”

“We don’t have the money to fund the current contract with unions, but agencies are going to have to eat that use of their budget,” he said.

In his across-the-board cuts, Culver put all state agencies and departments on a level field. Branstad won’t do that, noting that some departments, such as the Department of Human Services – the state’s largest executive branch agency – administer programs that, if cut, would put the health and safety of Iowans at risk.

Homan and other labor leaders are gearing up for a fight over collective bargaining rights in Iowa, defined in Chapter 20 of the Iowa Code. “There’s some clear need for changes,” Branstad said during the news conference. “Management’s rights have been extremely curtailed.”

Asked if his intent is to do away with collective bargaining in Iowa, Branstad said “there’s no bargaining now.”

“The true reality is that we’re stuck with a contract that was not negotiated, but acquiesced,” the governor said, adding he believes the agreement is out of touch with current economic realities. “Is it fair for [state employees] to get free health care when others are paying a huge chunk?”

Homan said it’s unfair for Branstad to characterize the 2-year labor agreement reached last year as “acquiescence.” Culver signed the pact in November after losing his re-election bid.

Branstad “can have whatever opinion he wants,” Homan said. “It was negotiated by the state. The state accepted the initial proposal because it was reasonable, and because of sacrifices made under the 2009-2011 contract. They took a freeze, gave up their deferred compensation match and made other sacrifices. We negotiated in good faith, and the real governor at the time accepted our proposal, and as governor-elect, Terry Branstad had no control.

“Now he’s upset that he can’t bargain the contract,” Homan continued. “I’ll see him in two years.”

Branstad wouldn’t say if a court challenge will be lodged against the agreement. “But I assume this Legislature isn’t going to fund it,” he said.

Homan said history should discourage that. “A deal is a deal,” he said. “In 1991, we had a deal and he reneged on that. It went to the Supreme Court, and AFSCME won that lawsuit with a unanimous decision, and Terry Branstad was forced to give this union and the members we represented their 9 percent increases, plus interest.

“Shame on the governor of this state for continuing to attack state employees who are out there every day working their tails off, and all public employees, while promising $300 million in corporate sales tax and property tax relief people who do not need it, when the working people of this state need a reasonable wage and reasonable benefits.”

The story has been corrected since publication to accurately describe the size of Iowa’s rainy-day fund at nearly $1 billion.