The House of Delegates approved Gov. Parris N. Glendening's proposal to give state employees legally guaranteed collective bargaining rights yesterday, an important step toward achieving one of the governor's top legislative priorities.

The bill now goes to the Senate.

The 103-32 vote came after Howard County Del. Robert L. Flanagan, the House Republican whip, warned that its passage would lead to the demise of the Maryland Classified Employees Association, Maryland's oldest state workers' organization.

"Our state employees should not be treated as a prize of war," Flanagan said. "We should not walk down the path where MCEA will be destroyed."

Del. Howard P. Rawlings, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, replied that it was a "finely crafted" bill that should satisfy all state employee unions as well as the governor.

"This is a great bill for the workers of the state of Maryland," the Baltimore Democrat said.

State employees have been able to bargain since 1996, when Glendening issued an executive order calling for union representation elections. But this is the first time either chamber of the legislature has approved bargaining rights.

Glendening said after the vote that the House action was "great" for labor-management relations in the state. "It's about 95 percent of what we requested," he said.

The bill does not include the governor's controversial proposal to allow a mandatory "agency fee" that unions could collect from any state worker for whom they hold bargaining rights, even if the worker is not a union member.

That proposal, strongly opposed by MCEA, was eliminated by the Appropriations Committee before the bill came to the floor.

Even without that provision, the bill's passage is an important victory for the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, the AFL-CIO affiliate that represents the largest number of state employees under the executive order.

In particular, AFSCME expects to benefit from a provision that would extend collective bargaining rights to the non-faculty employees of the state university system.

Sue Esty, AFSCME's chief lobbyist in Annapolis, said the House action was "truly an historic occasion."

MCEA had been pleased with the legislation last week after a subcommittee adopted an amendment to guarantee it access to state workplaces -- something it has been denied since losing all of its bids for exclusive collective bargaining rights in elections two years ago. That amendment was removed by the full committee.

The bill was supported by 100 Democrats and three Republicans.

Del. Richard La Vay, a Montgomery Republican, challenged Rawlings on his change of heart from three years ago, when he successfully opposed collective bargaining legislation.

Rawlings admitted that at the time, he was among those who predicted "chaos in the streets" if state employees were allowed to bargain collectively.

"Lo and behold, after the governor put the executive order out, everything seems to be working out well," Rawlings said.

Pub Date: 3/25/99