Essentially, she's calling for the unions and her negotiators to come up with new contracts because the state can't pay for the new ones.
Marty Brown, head of Gregoire's budget office, sent her a letter yesterday claiming the new collective bargaining agreements will cost the state $1.1 million for a daily rate increase associated with training money for adult family home care providers and $120 million in compensation and benefits for the five agreements with other state workers unions. (Brown also notes that of the five agreements, one resulted in no cost increase and one actually resulted in decreased costs.)
Some of those unions have been quick to respond. The Washington Federation of State Employees says they've been the ones "pushing the governor’s bargaining team to speed up the glacial pace of negotiations" and that
"Federation members have submitted countless money-saving ideas through the union, through the governor’s 'budget transformation' program and the program set up by Sen. Joe Zarelli and Sen. Margarita Prentice. And you don’t need to be reminded that in the past two years you’ve already sacrificed more than $1 billion in lost pay raises, furloughs, furlough-caused pay cuts, higher health costs, diverted pension funds, layoffs and the resulting workload increases."This is just the start of many budget-related battles to come.
