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'Historic' Day for Oklahoma's Municipal Workers

Following a landmark decision re-opening the door to collective bargaining for thousands of municipal workers throughout the state, employees of the city of Enid are now preparing to file with the state Public Employees Relations Board (PERB) for union recognition.

In a 5-4 ruling, the state Supreme Court earlier this month reinstated a 2004 collective bargaining law the same justices had struck down last July. Enid city employees, who organized last year with AFSCME, were elated. "Now we can get down to the business of building our union," says Water Department meter reader Alan Peterson.

The collective bargaining law's author, state Sen. Jay Paul Gumm (D-Durant), called the latest court judgment "a historic victory for freedom." He said all workers "should have the freedom to decide for themselves whether to join a union. The state Supreme Court clearly backs that freedom."

Enid officials had challenged the law as unconstitutional because it applied only to employees of the state's 11 largest cities — municipalities of 35,000 or more. Their arguments persuaded a district court judge and, later, the high court, to overturn it. But municipal employees throughout the state — working through AFSCME — urged the Supreme Court to reconsider. It did, and the majority said the law's application to cities over a certain population threshold "is not arbitrary or capricious," but rather "rationally related to the stated purpose of the legislation."

To read the Supreme Court ruling, City of Enid v. Public Employee Relations Board (Case Number 101729), go to: http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/deliverdocument.asp?citeid=445719

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