Trends and Developments Concerning Washington Public Labor Contracts
By: Jim Cline and Eamon McCleery
In Snohomish County, Decision 12723-B (PECB, 2018), PERC overturned the five-day suspension of the Guild’s President for allegedly violating a County policy against having personal cell phones in the secure portions of the County Jail. PERC found that the County’s actions helped create a situation in which it could impose discipline. Therefore, it concluded that the real reason for the discipline was retaliation for the President’s Guild activities.
By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
This is the final article in our 10 part economy and wage settlement series.
Even before Donald Trump was elected president indicators pointed to the return of both the local and the US CPI to a 2% + figure for the next few years, something previously discussed in this series. There are some economists that point to the bond market activity as indications of pending rising inflation. Others are not convinced that even the more dramatic actions of a new administration will have an immediate effect on inflation because there are some unchanging realities that are pushing inflation downward. Greg Ip, in his article Trumpflation: Not Now, Maybe Later, offers the following projections:
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 discussed geographic location and the effect of various labor markets on public safety wages.
