Steve Bloom/The Olympian
With Gov. Gary Locke at her side outside the state Insurance Building, Attorney General Christine Gregoire announces Monday that she intends to seek an injunction against any strike by state employees.

Gregoire seeks to block strike

Attorney general will go to court, says walkout illegal

PATRICK CONDON, AND BRAD SHANNON, THE OLYMPIAN

OLYMPIA -- Attorney General Christine Gregoire said her lawyers are ready to go to court Wednesday morning to cut off an employee walkout that she considers illegal.

Gregoire said Monday that her staff has prepared the legal documents necessary to immediately seek an injunction against a possible strike by the 19,000-member Washington Federation of State Employees.

State lawyers were ready to march into court first thing Monday morning to head it off, until the union agreed late Friday to a four-day cooling-off period before taking strike actions.

"If there is a disruption in state government, we will, at the request of our clients, go in for an injunction," Gregoire said. "We're prepared to do so."

Last week, more than 7,000 members of the WFSE voted in favor of a strike, a full 80 percent of those who participated in the election. The union members are protesting a pay and benefits package they consider insufficient.

The cooling-off period will end at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, after which members of the WFSE -- the state's largest public worker union -- plan a series of "random and unannounced" protest actions if their concerns aren't met, according to Greg Devereux, the union's executive director.

"If I arrived at work on Wednesday morning and there were picket lines set up around the Governor's Office and around the Legislature and around General Administration and at our correctional facilities and at Western State Hospital, we are left with no choice but to go into court and ask for an injunction to stop it," Gregoire said.

Gregoire would not reveal what kind of legal recourse the state would seek against striking workers or union leaders, but said that fines and even jail time are options the court could consider.

Devereux said that the WFSE has drawn up a list of essential services at every agency where union members work, such as caring for the elderly or the mentally disabled; those functions will continue even during a strike, he said, and that will form the basis of the union's legal argument.

"To get an injunction, we believe they have to prove that our strike would cause irreparable harm to the state," Devereux said. "We think we're armed legally to fend that off."

Even as legal barbs flew, officials from the union, the state and legislators said they hope to reach a solution before the cooling-off period expires. Gregoire, along with Gov. Gary Locke and Secretary of State Sam Reed, met Monday morning with legislative leaders. The strike was a major point of discussion.

"I think the legislators have expressed a willingness to discuss this, to see if there's any way they can meet some of the critical issues that state employees have raised," Locke said at a news conference with Gregoire after the meeting.

Union members have expressed distaste for Locke's 2001-2003 budget, which proposed yearly cost-of-living increases at a level lower than those guaranteed to public school teachers by Initiative 732. The governor also proposed that state employees and teachers pay a higher share of their health insurance costs.

The budget passed by the state Senate includes state employee salary increases matched to those of teachers, at a level of 3.7 percent this year and 3.1 percent next year. But it retained Locke's health insurance cost increases, and it also drained some money he had proposed to fund recruitment and retention programs at state agencies.

Devereux said in order to call off a strike, union leaders want concessions on three issues: Salary increases stay linked to those of teachers; a cap so health insurance costs would remain at current levels; and a pledge that the Legislature won't cut other state services to pay for the first two requests.

"We don't want them to lay off 2,000 state workers to pay for salaries and benefits," Devereux said.

He wouldn't reveal an area where the union might be flexible. "We don't want to give away our bottom line yet," he said.

Reed said that in the meeting, Gregoire acted as a true mediator, raising with legislative leaders the possibility of going to the union with a specific offer to head off the strike.

"There is some activity in that direction," Reed said, though he wouldn't reveal specifics.

Gregoire also refused to speculate on what it would take to make the union back off. The House of Representatives 2001-2003 budget has not been finished and likely won't be released until Friday -- two days after the end of the cooling-off period.

House Co-Speaker Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, praised the efforts of Democrats Locke and Gregoire in dealing with the strike threat. He was pessimistic, though, at producing a budget that will please the union.

"The way it sounds, they've pretty much made up their minds," Ballard said.

Additionally, the House's Democratic and Republican budget writers said the financial situation facing the state makes it difficult to raise the money needed to meet union demands.

Of the strike threat, House Appropriations Co-Chairman Barry Sehlin, R-Oak Harbor, said: "It really doesn't change anything that I'm doing."

On the web:

Office of the Attorney General.

Governnor Gary Locke.

Washington Public Employees Association.

Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSCME-AFL-CIO.

Washington State Legislature.

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