Salisbury Mayor Randy Taylor is pushing to end union representation of city workers. The city council has taken an initial vote of 3-to-2 to end such representation. Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talked with the union leaders who vow to fight the effort.
PROTESTERS: "All right, everyone. When I say union, you say power Union. Power. Union. Power. Heck yeah."
RUSH: Around 50 or so gathered at Unity Square in downtown Salisbury over the weekend in their ongoing fight with Mayor Randy Taylor, who was pushing a measure to end union representation of city workers. This is Don Rush. They held up green signs, which read "Union Strong. Union Proud." City Council has already voted three to two on a resolution on first reading to end that right. The heart of the dispute is why the mayor has decided to take this road. Taylor's pointed to financial issues ahead and decided that the best way to handle them is to end union representation of the city's police, fire, and civil employees. He also says that he's not trust binding arbitration. So what does the bargaining table look like from the union's perspective? Jack Hughes is the Eastern Shore representative for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees or ASME.
HUGHES: We had one day we negotiated. We sat down one day. It went fairly well. They said they had no wage proposal that they would come back to us with a wage proposal. So they asked for extension. The extension expired, and so we wrote to 'em, Hey, what's going on here? They wrote back and said finally that they wanted to meet, that they were going to offer a two step increase for everybody. That was it. That's the last we've heard from 'em, so we haven't been back to the bargaining table.
RUSH: The mayors brought out charts during the council meetings to argue that revenue would not keep up with expenditures. He told the council they wanted to avoid binding arbitration given the uncertainty of the result. But union officials say they can work with the city to deal with those concerns. Brandon Records is a sergeant with the Salisbury Fire Department and currently president of the Salisbury Career Firefighters Local 4246.
RECORDS: Look, I've told them from the get-go, I'm a realist. We realize that the economy is not great and times can be tough, but like you've heard speakers here say, walking away isn't the solution. We can sit down at the same table and we can amicably come up with just as good an equal solution that works out for everyone. RUSH: City employees won the right to union representation during Mayor Jake Day's administration, which backed the effort, but things have changed. Council member Michelle Gregory, during the rally at Unity Square...
GREGORY: I can't tell you how much of a struggle it was to get it passed, but we got it passed unanimously. It passed unanimously. I need to say that again. Unanimously... every council member agreed that this needed to happen, and now we're just rolling backwards at a breakneck pace.
RUSH: So if the council approves the resolution to discontinue union representation, the next step supporters say, will be trying to put the issue to the voters. Firefighter Brandon Records says he's confident there will be plenty of resources to do that, especially with help from the International Association of Firefighters.
RECORDS: I fully, fully believe that we're going to hit the streets hard, and I have all the confidence that we'll be able to get the signatures. Frankly, we have had our ear to the street and a good sense of the pulse of the city based on the reactions on social media to all this going down and just the interactions with personal people when we've been already been out there knocking doors, and it is, I'm just shy of unanimously completely against this resolution.
RUSH: Whether the canvassing will have an impact on the council members who voted for the resolution remains to be seen. This is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
