After Legal Battle, First Contract for City Workers in Tulsa Suburb

A determined unit of city employees in Broken Arrow, Okla., that took its organizing battle all the way to the state supreme court now has union recognition and a first contract.

"It's been a long road, it's been tough, but we've stuck together, we've persevered and it's paid off," said Jimmy Helms, an assistant water plant manager who helped lead the effort to join CWA local 6012 and is now one of three Broken Arrow workers on the negotiating team.

Bargaining began in March 2007 for a first contract for the new unit of nearly 300 workers in public works, parks, sanitation, the city jail and City Hall – essentially all city departments outside of police and fire.

The parties went to arbitration after 15 bargaining sessions left many unresolved issues. For the union, the key issue wasn't pay but the city's insistence that it could still fire workers at will.

"The biggest thing that we fought for was not monetary, it was having a voice," said Jon Kirby, a Local 6012 steward who helped organize the Broken Arrow unit. "The biggest thing was that the city did not want to give us just cause (for termination) and we won that through arbitration."

The workers also now have a grievance procedure, seats on the city's employee insurance committee and the right to bargain any mid-contract changes in health care coverage. In addition to a 2.5 percent pay step adjustment the city offered, the arbitrator gave the workers an additional 1 percent raise. Workers will also accrue sick leave at a faster rate.  

Organizing in Broken Arrow, a Tulsa suburb of 90,000, began in 2004. After quickly collecting signatures from 80 percent of the workers, Local 6012 turned the petitions over to the state Public Employee Relations Board.

That's all that should have been necessary under a new state law governing bargaining rights for public workers in cities with populations of at least 35,000 – a law CWA fought to win.

But Helms said the city "started fighting and tried to block us at every turn – one punch after another. They kept trying to knock us back and we just kept getting back up."

Ultimately, Broken Arrow and several other cities affected by the new law took their case to the state Supreme Court, which first sided with the municipalities and ruled the collective bargaining law unconstitutional. CWA asked the Court to reconsider its decision and – against all odds – it overturned its own ruling.