By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer

This is the second part of our 11 part Summer 2015 wage series.  In this article we take a look at recent contract settlements and examine how those trends vary from recent previous years.  Our view of 2013 and 2014 settlements and what we have so far from 2015 indicates that the Washington State public safety employee wages are a mirror of national wage stagnation.  We see flat wage increases with little substantial real wage growth.  Whether a growing economy eventually will accelerate these is something we’ll discuss later in this series.

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By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer

As part of our spring 2013 wage series, it seemed important to interject a discussion about how arbitrators have ruled in the recent economic climate.  I recently spoke on many of the same points at the Annual PERC sponsored Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) Conference, so this seems like an appropriate time for this review.

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By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer

In the previous two articles in this wage series, we discussed the extent to which population and assessed valuation correlated with wage rankings.  In this article, we discuss geographic location and the effect of various labor markets on public safety wages.

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