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State employee contracts approved, without same-sex benefits
by Michael Khoo, Minnesota Public Radio
April 4, 2003

Peter Benner, the executive director of Council 6 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, says passage of the contract should give state employees "major peace of mind." (MPR Photo/Michael Khoo)

A bill is now on its way to Gov. Tim Pawlenty's desk that would ratify state employment contracts -- without providing benefits to same-sex partners of state workers. The House and Senate voted Thursday to strip those provisions from labor agreements that were initially negotiated in 2001, following a two-week strike. Union leaders say they're pleased the contracts were finally approved -- but they expressed disappointment in losing the domestic partner benefits and in the lengthy ratification process.

St. Paul, Minn. — The last ratified state employee contracts expired more than 20 months ago. A few months -- and a state employees strike -- later, Gov. Jesse Ventura's administration negotiated a new set of agreements with state unions.

Those agreements took effect on an interim basis, but they were never officially ratified because some lawmakers objected to provisions that extended health care benefits to the partners of gay and lesbian employees.

Republican House Speaker Steve Sviggum acknowledges the formal ratification votes were a long time coming. But he lays the blame on the Ventura administration, saying it should never have agreed to domestic partner benefits.

The governor's office and other folks should not have put state employees in these contracts in this position of having to amend out a negotiated benefit. That was the wrong thing to do. We're relieved it's over, but this is not the way to go about doing business. - Peter Benner

"We had sent very, very strong messages out of this House of Representatives, in a very strong bipartisan vote to the Ventura administration in the negotiations," says Sviggum. "We had made it very, very clear where the House had stood -- the House basically representing the citizens of the state of Minnesota. Different negotiations took place than was directed and it just took some time to work through that. But work through it we did."

The House voted 121-7 to approve the contracts, minus the domestic partner benefits. That followed a favorable 39-26 Senate vote for the same measure earlier in the day. The contracts do allow gay and lesbian employees to take time off in the event their partners become ill or die.

Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, is the Senate's only openly gay lawmaker. He says the refusal to preserve the same-sex partner benefits amounts to discrimination against gays, lesbians, and others in the so-called GLBT community.

"It's a sad matter of state policy that we insist on looking like fools and moving backwards. We signal to the rest of the country that some people aren't welcome here," says Dibble. "I'm standing here as a member of a GLBT family, one family of thousands and thousands of families in this state, who will not be marginalized forever. We will not be trivialized, diminished, or dismissed."

Nearly 80 households have taken advantage of the domestic partner benefits since they went into temporary effect more than a year ago. But the legislative action -- and Gov. Tim Pawlenty's expected signature -- will remove that provision by midsummer.

Failure to take formal action would have jeopardized all wage, salary, and benefit increases contained in the agreement, leading some union officials to say the agreements without the same-sex language was the best they could hope for given the circumstances.

Peter Benner, executive director of the state's largest public employees' union, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 6, says he welcomed the final vote. But says he is disappointed that Pawlenty and Republican leaders had stonewalled the domestic partner benefits.

"The governor's office and other folks should not have put state employees in these contracts in this position of having to amend out a negotiated benefit. That was the wrong thing to do. We're relieved it's over, but this is not the way to go about doing business," says Benner.

In the end, the labor agreements drew strong support from DFLers, who felt compelled to ratify the contracts despite the exclusion of the domestic partner benefits. House Minority Leader Matt Entenza of St. Paul says it was unacceptable to leave employees without any contract whatsoever.

"It's sad that the Republican majority seems obsessed with their social agenda, and that seems to creep into every bill that we have here. And it crept into this one. But at the end of the day, it was pretty clear what we had to do. We had to get this contract passed," Entenza says.

But the contracts won't be in effect for long. A new round of bargaining will begin soon, aimed at shaping labor agreements to take effect in July.

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