Labor-Bill Floor Manager Remains Hopeful

While the focus of state lawmakers has turned toward the budget and adjournment, the legislator who's been at the heart of the legislature's labor debates this year remains hopeful about the fate of four bills dealing with choice of doctor, prevailing wage, fair share, and collective bargaining.

"I think that we will pass at least one if not two of those labor bills this session," said Representative Rick Olson, a Des Moines attorney who's chair of the House Labor Committee and has been the floor manager of labor bills brought before the Iowa House this year.

Olson didn't indicate which ones he thought would pass. House File 333, the prevailing-wage bill that would require contractors to pay workers the same hourly wages and benefits on public projects as they would on private-sector projects in the area, is the only bill taken up by the full House so far, and it fell one vote short of passage.

"I thought I had 52 votes on prevailing wage, so there are interesting things that happen after people make commitments to you. On occasion, handshakes don't mean anything up here," Olson said. "We're working towards a different prevailing-wage bill that is a little bit different and hopes to capture another vote or two."

As for the bill that would allow injured workers rather than their employers to choose their doctor under the state's worker-compensation laws, the bill has cleared committee, and House Democrats have caucused on it but haven't done a hard vote count.

"The choice of doctor bill, it can be massaged a little bit," Olson said. "We have 49 other states plus the District of Columbia that all have a choice-of-doctor bill. The majority of them allow the employee to chose that doctor. We're in the minority. We could still see some movement."

And then, Olson said, there's still the bill that would require nonunion workers to pay their fair share for union services and the Chapter 20 bill that would expand the scope of collective bargaining. The latter was approved by the legislature last year but vetoed by Culver, who has this year stepped up his support for all four labor bills.

"The Chapter 20 bill, you'd think that would be a likely suspect; it passed the House and the Senate last year, vetoed by the governor. Why would it not pass this year?" Olson asked. When questioned if an agreement with Culver was close to happening, he responded: "I think it is."

Ken Sagar, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor AFL-CIO, had difficulty explaining at a forum on labor issues Thursday why both a legislature and governor's office controlled by Democrats have so far failed to pass any of the four labor bills under consideration this legislative session.

"I don't really have a good explanation on why we haven't been able to move forward on these issues and we are a little bit disappointed about that," Sagar said. "Iowa is a fairly conservative state, so when we use labels of 'Democrat' and 'Republican,' maybe they don't apply to the extent they do out in Washington or California or New York. Sometimes what we see are folks who are in relative terms Democrats and Republicans, but we're all still pretty moderate."

Sagar appeared at the IowaPolitics.com forum held at Drake University on labor and employment issues along with Nate Boulton, attorney at Hedberg Law Firm PC, which represents several unions; John Gilliland, senior vice president of the Iowa Association of Business & Industry; and Russ Samson, a law partner at Dickinson, Mackaman, Tyler & Hagen, PC.

Gilliland gave the legislature a "D" letter grade for its failure to stimulate Iowa's economy. "Does this bill do anything to put the 85,000 Iowans back to work?" Gilliland asked. "Quite frankly, we haven't had any of those."

Meanwhile, Sagar and Boulton both gave the legislature an "incomplete" grade so far this session, with none of the four bills pushed by labor having been approved yet this session.

This weekly summary comes from IowaPolitics.com, an online government and politics news service. IowaPolitics.com staff contributed to this report.

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