University of Iowa graduate students file complaint against regents

IOWA CITY - As discussion heats up around proposed legislation that would strip Iowa unions of their collective bargaining rights, the University of Iowa graduate student union is joining its counterparts by filing a 'prohibited practice” against the state, by way of the Board of Regents.

The Campaign to Organize Graduate Students or COGS, which represents 2,183 UI graduate students employed as teaching or research assistants, earlier this week filed its complaint with the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board alleging bad-faith bargaining in its negotiations for a 2017-2019 contract.

AFSCME Iowa Council 61, which represents about 40,000 public employees including some at Iowa State University, and United Faculty, representing about 550 University of Northern Iowa faculty members, filed similar complaints last week.

The complaints come as the Republican-controlled Legislature is moving through a proposed measure some say acts as a 'union busting bill” in that it limits mandatory bargaining topics to just wages. If it passes, unionized employees - like public school teachers, some public safety workers, public works employees, and many across Iowa's public university campuses - would be stripped of their right to bargain for things like insurance, hours, vacations, holidays, and overtime pay.

Even wage-related bargaining would be limited to increases no higher than three percent or the consumer price index. And the proposal includes additional provisions challenging union existence, including one requiring union recertification and another prohibiting payroll deductions for union dues.

Murmurs about proposed changes to Chapter 20 have infiltrated union and lawmaker circles for months - even as the state and the regents negotiated new two-year contracts with unions like COGS, AFSCME, United Faculty, and Service Employees International Union Local 199, which represents about 5,000 workers, including professional and scientific UI Health Care employees.

The new complaints - including the one COGS filed this week - accuse the state and regents of refusing to continue bargaining 'until the Iowa Legislature passed a bill amending Chapter 20.”

Josh Lehman, a spokesman for the Board of Regents, has said the board is 'continuing to follow the prescribed process of negotiation.” He also has provided a bargaining schedule showing United Faculty and COGS previously agreed to reserve Feb. 20 and 21, respectively, for mediation and March 1 and 2 for arbitration.

But the COGS complaint accuses the regents - despite efforts involving a state mediator - of being 'unavailable for bargaining.”

'The Board of Regents stated its position that it would not meet for bargaining or mediation until after a date by which the employer perceived the Legislature would have taken action to change the statutory provisions of Chapter 20,” according to the COGS complaint.

Although SEIU hasn't filed a complaint with the state Public Employment Relations Board, or PERB, earlier this week it did agree to ratify the regents' last contract offer and urged them to respond to reports it would 'not honor the offer that it made to these nurses and other health care professionals.”

When asked on Friday if the regents have responded to the SEIU's ratification, Lehman told The Gazette, 'We continue to follow the collective bargaining process.”

Landon Elkind, president of COGS, told The Gazette on Friday that PERB has started the process toward mediation.

Jan Berry, an administrative law judge with the state, told The Gazette that complaints can go to a judge or to the full board. If the board sides with the complainant, it can order 'remedial relief.”

'The general philosophy is they try to put the parties back in the position they would have been had the violation not occurred,” Berry said.

l Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com