Labor Issues

Labor day is a holiday to recognize workers and the labor movement organized to advocate for them. We'll talk with two Iowa union leaders on this edition of Iowa Press.

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For decades, Iowa Presshas brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating more than 50 years on statewide Iowa PBS. This is the Friday, August 29th edition of Iowa Press.

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Here is Kay Henderson.

[Henderson] On this Labor Day weekend, we will take a snapshot of Iowa's labor movement. According to federal data, in 2024, 9.9% of workers in America who earned a wage or a salary were a member of a union in Iowa, that number was lower, at 6.4% in 2024. By comparison, in 1989 it was 15.4% of Iowa wage and salary workers were members of a union. We are joined today by two union leaders in Iowa. They are Charlie Wishman. He is president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. Welcome back to the program, Charlie.

[Wishman] Thank you. 

[Henderson] And Joshua Brown, president of the Iowa State Education Association, for about a year. He's a middle school special education and social studies teacher. Welcome.

[Brown] Thank you.

[Henderson] Joining our conversation is Marissa Payne. She is a statehouse and politics reporter for the Des Moines Register.

[Payne] Yeah. So give us a temperature read on unions in Iowa. What is the state of unions in Iowa would you say?

[Wishman] Sure. So I think that when it comes to the state of unions in Iowa, I think that actually things are people are are feeling very, very fed up. They. Look, every system right now seems to be broken, not just in Iowa, but in America. And it's not just members themselves, but the general public. We have a very high approval rating in terms of I 70%. I think is the last numbers when it comes to, you know, how well people think labor unions are doing and what, what good they're doing for society. I think that when you look at different sectors, some of them are clearly doing really well, are building trades, are doing really, really fantastic. Some sectors of the private sector are some some places in the private sector are struggling a little bit and there's a lot of uncertainty that's going on in the ag economy as well as in tariffs and things like that have been proposed. But then unfortunately and and Josh knows all about this as well. Our public sector unions have faced a series of union busting bills that really their their only purpose has been to to bust the unions. And they have the law has had its intended effect on, on so many things, including membership.

[Henderson] Josh, how many teachers do you represent and educators?

[Brown] Yeah, we represent about 50,000 educators across the state of Iowa, ranging from nurses and counselors, associates, secretaries, teachers, and everything in between.

[Henderson] And back to Marissa's original question. What's the state of your union?

[Brown] Yeah, I think our union did face some of those challenges that Charlie talked about when, especially in 2017, with the collective bargaining bill was weakened. We and we we lost some members during that time. And but we've been starting to get back to stable and starting to see some growth. And so we're looking forward to continuing that growth and making our members excited about some of the things that we can do as a union. We don't need we would prefer to have a stronger collective bargaining law that required school boards and administration to sit down at the table with their educators, but we can do that through organizing, even without that law. And so some of our unions and locals across the state are starting to figure that out.

[Payne] Yeah. And Kay mentioned union membership being down in Iowa compared to nationally. What would you say are some reasons we're seeing for that in Iowa?

[Wishman] Sure. Again, the we have had a very hostile legislature to organize labor, and we've had a very hostile set of governors between Governor Branstad and Governor Reynolds. That's been very, very hostile to organized labor as well. Just about – 

[Henderson] But if you you cited public opinion polls that say unions have, then why aren't private sector unions growing?

[Wishman] Right. Because it's really interesting in this country, if we had organized laws that actually that made it easier for people to organize, you might see that actually catch up. But we really don't have great laws around organizing in this country. I find it really interesting that when we go and invade other countries, good, bad or indifferent about how it feels when we leave, we right collective bargaining into their constitutions. Look at Germany, look at Iraq. We. It has been the foreign policy of this country that collective bargaining is good for democracy around the world. But somehow, when it comes to the multinational corporations that own this, this government at the state and federal level, they want to make sure that that doesn't apply to Americans, too.

[Henderson] Well, let's stick with federal policy a little bit. President Trump this week has negated collective bargaining agreements for some federal agencies, including the National Weather Service and the USDA, which may impact some Iowa employees that will obviously be challenged in court. What will be the argument?

[Wishman] So, first of all, you know, as far as the actual legal arguments around it, that's above my pay grade and probably happening in some places where, you know, the strategy behind what it is, how the how they are attacking those in court probably is, is there's a lot of different opinions on that. But I know that that is something that's being litigated. But it's not just that we have had the VA just last week lose all of their bargaining rights as well. I'm old enough to remember Pat when Ronald Reagan fired every air traffic controller in this country. When I was pretty young. This goes beyond this is the largest union busting person, let alone president, that we have ever had in this office. If you count and you mentioned some things, the National Weather Service, the way they're going about removing bargaining rights is by saying that their national security. Tell me how the EPA is national security. Tell me how the National Weather Service or national security employees. That makes no sense to me at all. Or even how nurses at the VA are. All they want to do is make sure that the people they care for get the best possible treatment that they can get. That's not national security. That's just nurses doing their jobs.

[Henderson] Marissa and I recently covered the Governor's Department of Government Efficiency Task Force, and they unveiled some proposals.

[Payne] Yeah. One of the ideas that they floated was tying teacher pay to student performance. Josh, would you like to weigh in on what impact do you think that proposal would have if enacted?

[Brown] Yeah, I mean, I if it's enacted, it's going to have negative impacts because we're going to lose the sense that makes public schools strong, which is our teachers sharing the best ideas, being collaborative. If you start trying to narrow what a student's worth down to a test score, you're going to lose all the rest of the things that we need in our public schools and in schools in general, and so this system has been tried. They've done it before, and it doesn't work. I mean, it's a scheme that ends up just hurting morale and hurting the ability for educators to trust one another to work together. Because you add that measure of competitiveness. People don't want to share the best ideas with other people, and people want to go to the easiest jobs and try to leave the places where we actually need the best teachers.

[Henderson] When I covered the legislature having this discussion during Governor Branstad's term, the argument was that something needed to happen because test scores are going down, students aren't as prepared as they used to. Iowa's no longer number one in education, and this would elevate people who are doing the best job and pay them well. How do you argue against that?

[Brown] Yeah, I think one of the things that we've noticed around when these kind of schemes are put in place around the country, is that the schools that are already high performing continue to be high performing, and the schools that aren't don't see that much of an increase. And so what we need to be able to do is actually invest in our public schools to give them the resources and tools they need to help students be successful, and to provide the assistance needed. I think the educators on the ground and the parents in our communities, as well as the students, should all be at a table and working on solutions, but it needs to be funded. And there's been decades, over a decade of funding that hasn't kept up with inflation in public schools across the class last ten years. Over a couple different administrations. And so if we really want to see improved student achievement, we need to invest in public schools and give educators. Actually make a difference and have a seat at the table.

[Payne] And another idea that the Iowa Task Force floated was moving the state's IP system to a defined contribution system. Does AFL-CIO represent any unions that would be impacted by that plan? And what's your coalition's view of it?

[Wishman] Oh, absolutely. So many from locals that belong from from ISEA to AFSCME to the to building trades unions that represent people in the public sector. Yes, there are a lot of folks and the it's pretty unanimous hands off our ipers and we will defend that at all costs. And I know that there are since the DOGE task force came out with that, I think it's worth pointing out that these are folks who they're not bad people, but they're all from one party and they are all really wealthy individuals that don't understand what our workers are, that they need a they need a retirement. The state made a promise to them. These are some good people. But really out of touch with what our workers need for retirement and don't really have any clue. And so I guess, you know, we have had a lot of Republican legislators. And of course, many, many Democrats say, no, we are going to oppose changes to Ipers, but we're going to be really vigilant about that because we have reason to to doubt sometimes things that politicians say and promise to us. So we will defend ipers at all costs. These are promises that the state made to thousands and thousands and thousands of workers that are union or nonunion or whatever. The state needs to keep those, keep that promise.

[Henderson] Josh?

[Brown] Yeah, I think going back to in 2017, when the collective bargaining laws changed, we nobody campaigned to change collective bargaining. Nobody told us that was in public, that that was what they were going to do. And then when the law started coming out, they started talking about tweaks to the collective bargaining bill. And so when people tell us, no, they're not going to change anything, they've lost our trust. And so we're going to organize as well around stopping changes to ipers, because it's a tool that we use to recruit and retain quality educators across the entire state of Iowa.

[Henderson] So when the House speaker says, we're not going to do it, and the Senate Republican leader said, I'm not hearing from any Republicans that we're going to do it, that that isn't something you can say is set in stone.

[Brown] I don't think we as an organization or me as individual who is directly lied to eight years ago can be in a situation where we can trust anything that a politician that's going to be representing people in Des Moines is saying at this point, because this is people's livelihoods. We can't just sit back and hope that and trust that people are telling us the truth.

[Henderson] Charlie, your organization is part of a of a national organization, and I'm sure you're tracking union related bills and other Republican led states. Are there things that you are expecting to pop up at the 2026 legislature, which will be the last legislature that works with Republican Governor Kim Reynolds to pass legislation?

[Wishman] So it's really interesting when all the talk last, last year about project 2025 -- 

[Henderson] At the federal level.

[Wishman] Yes, at the federal level, but the same project, 2025 things have been happening here in Iowa for some time. Excuse me. So. When it comes to. I'm sorry. Can you repeat your question?

[Henderson] So what are you looking at? The 2026 legislature and other states thinking that may get introduced in Iowa?

[Wishman] Sure, sure. So, I mean, look where I was going with the project 2025 stuff is like we've seen Iowa is typically the testing ground for a lot of these things, and so is Florida and some other states. But I don't think anything whatsoever is off the table. So, you know, who knows what could be coming down the pike. But we most definitely feel like, you know, there are things that have been proposed in the last five years. This legislature proposed to put kids back in mines and to be working in packing houses. So nothing at all would surprise me one bit. But when I go to this Dodge task force, when it first starts and say, look, if you want to actually make government efficient, why don't we talk to AFSCME workers who actually know the systems they want their jobs to be efficient. And the first thing they come back with is, oh, public employees are making too much money, and we should get rid of their or drastically alter their pension system. I don't got a great feeling going into this session, but we'll fight like hell to stop anything.

[Payne] Then what is your answer to making things more efficient?

[Wishman] Oh, most certainly so. Back in. Gosh, I think it was maybe 2009, 2010. We had a process at at the time, I was on staff at AFSCME. And so what we actually did is we had people from corrections, people from all the different departments that were members and get together. And it was just basically give us a list so that we can provide these to legislators and policy makers as to simple things that can be done to make your job easier and not only make your job easier, that would make the whole department run better, right? If you want to know how to make something more efficient in my office, don't necessarily talk to me. Go talk to the people that that that work there. And that's what I do. And so they know the things that will do that. And again, when we offer that up, and then all we get back is, yeah, maybe we'll meet with you later. And oh, by the way, this is all going to be about consolidation of services at the county and the state level. It's going to be all about public employees make too much money. It felt like there was a predetermined outcome.

[Payne] Back on the legislative front, one of the bills that Governor Reynolds recently signed increases starting teacher pay to $50,000. What has been the impact of that proposal?

[Brown] Yeah, I think it's going to take a little bit of time. I think for the beginning teacher salary to increase interest in becoming an educator, because you would have already had to be in the pipeline to be to become an educator for that to have enticed you in maybe over the next several years, we'll see an increase of students who are coming out of our high schools, going to college to become educators, being able to have that kind of basic wage at a higher level. But I think that's only going to work if we tie the beginning teacher salary to inflation, and we can see continued growth there and not just let it sit there for the next 15 years. The other piece there is in a lot of places that that was a recruitment measure, but we didn't do anything really for the retention. You need to be able to have adequate funding going to public schools so that local collective bargaining teams sitting down with school board members, sitting down with the administration can figure out what systems of salary and benefits would make most sense for their local community to be able to retain teachers as well, and not just have a starting salary and a 12th year salary. You need a people need to be able to see growth in between and after 12 years too.

[Henderson] So are people between year one and year 12 leaving because they didn't get a pay raise?

[Brown] I wouldn't say that they're leaving because of that, but there were lots of members across the state that are very frustrated because they're hearing about this record investment in teacher salary. And there are teachers across the state of Iowa that didn't see any of that, because maybe they were in that range already, or they were in the middle there, or they've been around for 20, 25 years, and they were already making that and then maybe didn't see any raise because districts needed to figure out ways to ensure that they met the state minimums.

[Henderson] Charlie, over the past few years, the Iowa legislature has invested money in apprenticeships, and there's been a big push to increase the accessibility at community colleges to programs that are a certification, not necessarily a degree which takes a lot less time to get a certificate than a degree, in your view, what else needs to be done for the trades?

[Wishman] Yeah. So gosh, so continuing to support Dol registered apprenticeship programs is is number one because we do not have the workforce in this state to take on all the projects that we need to grow when we're almost last in economic development. But we still don't have enough workers. We need to be able to to get young people into these fields. So but it's not just that one of the very first things that happened is. When when there was a change in government, you know, project labor agreements on, on public projects went away. Now, that may seem like a really, you know, in the weeds public policy issue, but it's something that saves money, makes sure that that the job gets done on time and gets done quality. And you don't have to go back and and change things that got screwed up. It's a much more cost efficient way to do it. We've always in general with the trades. We've had this issue where. Around contracting and things. Lowest responsible bidder. Right. We know what lowest means and we know what bidder means, but we've never really defined what is responsible. Right. Does that mean we should look at the health and safety records of a contractor, or should we look at whether or not they had committed wage theft? What is responsible? Because I think we have a pretty good idea of what responsible is. But some other folks just want to look at low bid. Well, we do want a cheaper product. But not only that, it's not cheaper if you have to go back and do the work again and so on. I could go on and on, but I think that there's a lot of things that can be done for, for the building trades and the private sector, manufacturing and other things as well.

[Payne] Yeah, we're seeing growth in A.I. and automation across industries. So what sort of impacts to the workers you represent are we already seeing?

[Wishman] So I think so I'll, I'll answer first because I know it has a huge impact on teaching. And in schools, but I think that it's so first of all, workers have always figured out some way around advancement, advances in technology. Technology is always going to march forward, and unions have always tried to figure out a way to work with those sorts of things. But we're not just going to see changes in the world of work. A.I. is going to change society, which makes this a much, much deeper problem. But let's just, for instance, take a look at the data centers that are going up, and I love it. These are this is great work for our building trades members, the men and women who, who who build things are building great, great data centers all over the place. But even without A.I. in them, that grows at an exponential rate in terms of its computing power. One of those data centers already takes the amount of power as Cedar Rapids to power. Right. And these are going up all over the place. It's Microsoft, it's Google, it's Apple. These are the leading A.I. companies. And so when I talk to our utility locals, there's some real concern about are we going to be able to generate enough power. That's not even getting into job displacement issues. That's not even. And water also is another issue as well when it comes to this. So we're going to see some huge, huge societal impacts, not just on the world of work, but how we live. Are we going to be facing brownouts or blackouts over this? We need to really, seriously think about energy policy in this state and how to increase it as possible and the cleanest way possible.

[Henderson] Josh?

[Brown] Yeah, I think one of the of course, A.I. has already crept its way into schools. Right. And whether or not it's students trying to use it in various ways to get around doing their assignments or figuring out ways to take shortcuts here and there. But I one of the things that we're doing to work together on, along with our National Education Association, we've created some task force to work on the issue to we created a policy statement to try to work together to create some ground rules that we're going to be helping to work with states as well as school districts, to make sure that we are using A.I. in a responsible way. That helps enhance education and not deter or take away from someone's ability to learn. And so we're going to be working. We've created a few different workshops that we've done already for our members, but we're going to be doing even more over the next couple of years to be able to help our members across the state of Iowa have the tools they need to be able to use A.I. in a way that helps enhance public education across our state. And a couple of weeks, we're actually going to be sitting down with the Science Center of Iowa, who's been working on this as well. And so working with private partners, people on the outside that have maybe dived in a little bit more and figure out how can we work together as public school teachers, as the union and as private sector, to figure out how do we use this tool that isn't going to go away to help enhance public education in the state of Iowa.

[Henderson] Gentlemen and Marissa, we have to go away because we are out of time for this edition of Iowa Press. Charlie and Joshua, thanks for joining us today.

[Both] Thank you.

For everyone here at Iowa PBS. Thanks for watching. You can watch every episode of Iowa Press at iowapbs.org. Happy holiday.

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Funding for Iowa Press was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation.

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