Washington Public Sector Labor Negotiations Blog
Trends and Developments Concerning Washington Public Labor Contracts
By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
This is the fourth part of our early 2021 wages series. In the last article in our 2021 wage series, we looked at all Washington public safety settlements from 2019 to 2021. That report showed a downward trend in 2021 settlements.
By: Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
In part one of our early 2021 Wage series, we reported on the latest CPI data. That was a look backward at the more recent data. In this article, we look forward to what you might expect for inflation over the near term. Given the goal of achieving a wage increase that at the very least doesn’t fall behind the cost of living, knowing where inflation may be heading is important.
By: Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
Launch of the 2021 Winter Wage Series
This is the first of a multi-part series addressing current economic conditions and wage settlement trends. In this Winter 2021 Wage Series, we’ll bring you an update on CPI and economic developments, wage settlements, interest arbitration trends, statewide wage rankings for public safety classifications across the State, and an in-depth analysis of what factors appear to be impacting those rankings and settlements.
[Read more…]By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
Despite the pandemic and the associated recession, inflation has not completely disappeared, especially in the Seattle metropolitan area. This chart shows the month to month changes in the Seattle and All Cities “W” index from October 2019 to October 2020:
By: Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
Pushed down by the COVID Recession, the important June to June CPI number showed a dramatic, though expected, drop. We say “important” because many Washington public safety labor contracts are tied, directly or indirectly, to the June CPI numbers. As indicated in the recently released Guidebook on “Negotiation in Turbulent Times”, regardless of the CPI, we anticipate challenging bargaining in 2020 and into 2021. We are expecting most employers will at least start with 0% as their base wage proposal, and we’ve already seen one proposal for a -3%. [Read more…]
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.
By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
In the last issue we discussed whether – and to what extent — population influenced a jurisdiction’s relative wage ranking. In this article we discussed to what extent assessed valuation influences that ranking.
By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
In last three parts of the wage series we have discussed State wage rankings for the various public safety classifications. In the next part of the wage series we run our series of articles on factors that might influence or explain, at least in part, those wage rankings, with updated 2016 wage rankings.
By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
This is part 6 of our continued series on Washington public safety employee wages. In this issue we report on wage rankings for 911 dispatchers and police records clerks.
