For the first time in almost 10 years, non-public safety city employees in Fort Wayne can speak to Mayor Tom Henry and city department heads through union representation.
The move opens the door to collective bargaining for city workers who are not police officers or firefighters. These talks are not the same as collective bargaining, though. The talks are what’s called collective consultation.
Indiana University Labor and Employment Law Professor Ken Dau-Schmidt said there’s a significant difference, “because there is no right to strike, and there’s no right to take recourse to arbitration or anything like that,”
“All it is basically is the city saying ‘we will talk to our workers on a collective basis. We will talk to their representatives about a variety of issues,’” Dau-Schmidt said.
Nine years ago, the Fort Wayne City Council banned both collective bargaining and collective consultation in an effort to cut costs.
Councilman Tom Didier (R-3rd) said cutting takes the burden of paying union dues off of the taxpayer which saves the city money. Sixth District Councilwoman Sharon Tucker (D-6th) said banning collective consultation saved the city nothing in the broader perspective.
“We no longer had to settle claims,” Tucker said. “Then, perhaps, we saved dollars, but what did we lose on the other side, right? We lost really good employees who just said ‘I’m done. I don’t want to deal with this anymore.’ or we lost intellectual knowledge.”
Tucker was referring to turnover...
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