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A state appeals court has sided with Washington County in a labor dispute case, overturning previous rulings by the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission and Washington County Circuit Court.

The Wisconsin Court of Appeals, District 2, found the county didn’t bargain in bad faith in 2007 when, not long after signing a new collective bargaining agreement with Service Employees International Union Local 150, it laid off 18 of the union’s members and privatized laundry and janitorial services at the county-owned Samaritan Health Center nursing home.

According to the opinion, the agreement contained a clause that allowed the county to lay off union members and contract out for the same services. “While the union may regret that it failed to limit or eliminate language in the collective bargaining agreement that allowed the county to subcontract,” the opinion says, “the union still ratified the agreement.”

The Employment Relations Commission and Washington County Circuit Court held that the county negotiated in bad faith by failing to tell the union that amidst negotiations in 2006, the county was already meeting to plan possible layoffs.

The appeals court noted, however, that the county had announced layoffs of five employees in late 2006 but called them off, warning the union the county would consider “other avenues to achieve operational savings in 2007.”

Said the appeals opinion: “The county’s decision to subcontract … should not have come as a surprise to the union.”

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