In 2020, the Virginia General Assembly overturned the state’s decades-long ban on collective bargaining in the public sector, allowing municipal employees to unionize. Since then, some Charlottesville employees have urged City Council to pass a collective bargaining ordinance.
Frustrated with the city’s slow response, the Charlottesville Professional Firefighters Association and Amalgamated Transit Union (representing Charlottesville Area Transit employees) proposed their own ordinances last year. But in June, the city agreed to pay D.C.-based law firm Venable LLP $685,000 to draft a new ordinance in collaboration with city leadership, citing the city’s lack of research and preparation on the topic.
During last week’s council work session, interim City Manager Michael Rogers, joined by Venable LLP representatives, presented the long-awaited proposed ordinance, which includes numerous restrictions—and may not allow collective bargaining agreements to take effect for nearly two years, sparking pushback from the ATU, CAT employees, and other union supporters.
Under the proposed ordinance, collective bargaining would be initially limited to three units: sworn uniformed Charlottesville Police Department employees, sworn uniformed Charlottesville Fire Department employees, and full- and part-time Charlottesville Area Transit employees.
Within these groups, seasonal and temporary employees; confidential employees, who have authorized access to confidential personnel management, fiscal, or labor policy information; management employees, who are involved in the determination of labor relations or personnel policy; supervisors, which include personnel at the rank of battalion chief or above in the CFD, and at the rank of sergeant or above in the CPD; volunteers; and probationary employees would not be allowed in the unit. The positions not eligible for bargaining will be more clearly defined in the city’s personnel rules, which Venable is currently drafting, said Rogers.
However, supervisors would have the right to meet and confer with city administration. And after the first two years of engaging in collective bargaining, the city would be able to review the ordinance, and add more units.
The ordinance limits the number of units to ensure “the personnel and system necessary for collective bargaining gets up and running in the city,” said Robin Burroughs, an attorney with Venable, stressing the city’s smaller size and budget compared to other localities that have adopted collective bargaining. And though only CAT employees and firefighters—not CPD officers—have publicly supported collective bargaining, “police is also like fire, a public safety unit, and like transit, a group of employees that is having direct contact with the public on the frontlines, [so] it seemed like these were the three good places to start.”
All units would be able to bargain over wages and salaries; working conditions, such as work hours; and non-health and non-welfare benefits, such as leave and holidays. But they would not be able to bargain over health and welfare benefits; core personnel rules and decisions, like hirings and terminations; and budget matters, and they would be prohibited from striking. Issues not subject to bargaining could still be discussed between units and city leadership.
“As soon as employees start negotiating [benefits], it puts at risk the ability to retain the same level of benefit at the same cost for all employees,” Burroughs said.
If the city and a unit cannot come to a collective bargaining agreement, they would engage in mediation. If mediation fails, a neutral fact-finder would make a recommendation resolving the dispute. The city manager would consider the mediation results and the fact-finder’s recommendations, and submit their recommendations to council through the city budget or other legislation—however, council “retains the ultimate legislative discretion,” said Burroughs.
If the ordinance goes into effect January 1, 2023, unions could be certified as early as March. In case the city and units must engage in mediation or fact-finding, Venable proposes any collective bargaining agreement go into effect on July 1, 2024, at the start of the new fiscal year.
CAT union supporters are disappointed in the ordinance’s restrictions, and are pushing for a range of improvements. They want all city employees to be able to unionize, and bargain over more subjects, including disciplinary procedures and benefits. Bargaining would not take away the city’s right to discipline employees, but ensure discipline is justified, says John Ertl of the ATU.
The bus drivers also support using final binding arbitration—during which a neutral arbitrator makes a decision that must be honored—to resolve certain grievances and negotiation impasse. Under the proposed ordinance, “there’s no incentive to compromise,” since the city manager or council can reject a fact-finder’s recommendations, claims Ertl.
In response to the concerns Venable had with allowing more employees to bargain and increasing bargaining subjects, Ertl suggests the city stagger the dates that each bargaining unit takes effect, and stresses that union supporters are not trying to get out of the city’s current benefits plans—but protect the ones they currently have. “We just don’t want the city to, if we bargain for a raise, [turn] around and say, ‘you’re going to pay for your raise by paying higher health care premiums,’” he says.
“At transit, we need collective bargaining so we can have a grievance process,” adds Matthew Ray, who has driven for CAT for over eight years. “The reason we don’t have school bus operators is because of poor management.”
Additionally, the bus drivers are frustrated with the ordinance’s long timeline. CAT, which needs 120 to 130 drivers to be fully staffed, is currently down to 55 drivers—if it takes years for changes to come, even more CAT drivers will quit or retire, claims Ray.
“It’s by far the weakest [ordinance] that’s been passed in Virginia,” says Ertl. In several other Virginia localities that have passed collective bargaining ordinances, employees can bargain over benefits, and contract negotiations over non-fiscal issues can be resolved through binding arbitration.
During last week’s meeting, City Councilor Jaundiego Wade and Vice-Mayor Sena Magill also expressed concern over so many employees not being able to unionize right away. Councilor Michael Payne argued that benefits should be able to be bargained over, and disagreed with giving police a chance to bargain before other city employees when “they have not come forward requesting unionization.” Payne proposed allowing binding arbitration over non-fiscal issues, and creating a third bargaining unit for general employees.
“When you have a general employee unit … that’s more difficult to administer because not all of the interests are aligned,” replied Rogers.
City Council will hold a public hearing on the collective bargaining ordinance during its September 6 meeting.