April 29, 2024
By Jim Cline
In the last newsletter, we discussed that the Washington legislature has extended binding interest arbitration rights to emergency dispatchers. In this article, we discuss some practical questions about how interest arbitration would work, specifically for E911 employees.
Filed Under: Interest Arbitration
April 26, 2024
By Jim Cline
Long overdue good news for Washington Dispatchers. The Governor has signed SB 5808, extending binding interest arbitration rights to E911 centers. The law includes emergency telecommunicators in the definition of “uniform employees” under the PECBA interest arbitration provisions.
Filed Under: Interest Arbitration
April 12, 2024
By Jim Cline
The latest inflation numbers raises further questions about whether the CPI will continue to decline quickly below 3% as had been predicted. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released US All Cities inflation numbers for March this past Wednesday. Both the National “W” and “U” March indices were reported at 3.5%. That is an increase over the respective 3.1% and 3.2% numbers reported for February.
April 10, 2024
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.
Filed Under: Wage Settlements
April 8, 2024
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.
Filed Under: Wage Settlements
April 1, 2024
By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
Every month the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases an inflation update on national inflation numbers and every other month they release a “bi-monthly” update that includes regional data, including the Seattle CPI. In mid-March BLS released their report showing inflation through February.
March 29, 2024
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 articles on factors that might influence or explain, at least in part, those wage rankings, using the updated 2023 wage rankings.
Filed Under: Economics
December 29, 2023
By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
In our wage and settlement development survey, we’ve covered police, corrections, fire, dispatch, and records personnel. Cline and Associates collects and analyzes all public safety classifications on a statewide basis.
Filed Under: Economics, Wage Settlements
December 29, 2023
By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
This is part of our continued series on Washington public safety employee wages. In this issue we report on the current wage rankings for 911 dispatchers and police records clerks.
Filed Under: Other Contract Surveys, Wage Settlements
December 19, 2023
By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
This is Part 5 of our 2023 Wage Series. In our last article, we covered Commissioned Deputy and Police Officer Wages. In this article, we turn to Firefighter and Corrections Officer Wages. We’ll cover Dispatcher and Records Clerk Wages in the next article.
