{"id":17912,"date":"2016-12-28T22:58:55","date_gmt":"2016-12-29T06:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/state-union-files-grievance-over-walkers-budget\/"},"modified":"2016-12-28T22:58:55","modified_gmt":"2016-12-29T06:58:55","slug":"state-union-files-grievance-over-walkers-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/state-union-files-grievance-over-walkers-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"State union files grievance over Walker&#8217;s budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>ANCHORAGE \u2014 <\/strong>A union representing nearly 8,000 state employees has filed a complaint against Gov. Bill Walker and his administration for an alleged violation of contract.<\/p>\n<p>The Alaska State Employees Association filed the class-action grievance Tuesday in response to Walker\u2019s recently announced budget plan for next fiscal year. The union takes issue with a part of the plan that calls for downsizing Department of Transportation staff and privatizing the majority of the agency\u2019s design team.<\/p>\n<p>The grievance says plans to privatize union member positions must first have a feasibility study or an opportunity for the union to submit alternate proposals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s only fair to our members and it\u2019s part of the contract that there be some justification if they\u2019re going to privatize jobs,\u201d said ASEA Executive Director Jim Duncan.<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/juneauempire.com\/local\/2016-12-25\/state-employees-union-file-grievance-over-dot-outsourcing\" target=\"_blank\">State employees union to file grievance over DOT outsourcing<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Walker\u2019s budget overview for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2017, includes 76 position reductions from outsourcing design and up to 300 more in the future. The overview states that outsourcing design will bolster \u201cthe private sector economy while maximizing the number of projects completed with the available transportation funding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>ASEA is calling on Walker and his administration to immediately stop contracting out union members\u2019 work. The union is also requesting a third party conduct a feasibility study that includes \u201call costs associated with contracting out the work in question including, but not limited to, wages, benefits, administrative costs, agency overhead, program supervision, and audits.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the state struggles with a multibillion budget deficit amid chronically low oil prices, Walker said his goal is to cut the size of government and reduce spending.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen the capital budget was more than $2 billion, it made sense to have a large in-house design staff \u2014 but not so with a $115 million capital budget,\u201d he said in response to the ASEA\u2019s grievance.<\/p>\n<p>The Department of Administration has 20 days to respond to the grievance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ANCHORAGE \u2014 A union representing nearly 8,000 state employees has filed a complaint against Gov. Bill Walker and his administration for an alleged violation of contract. The Alaska State Employees Association filed the class-action grievance Tuesday in response to Walker\u2019s recently announced budget plan for next fiscal year. The union takes issue with a part [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-17912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17912"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}