By news intern Garrett McCulloch

King County has already tested its limits with county workers, and relations could get worse. County Council Member Kathy Lambert, a Republican who represents a swath of land from Bellevue to the Cascade Mountains, introduced an ordinance that would reduce cost of living raises, increase health care costs, and make other cuts to contracts with county employees represented by local unions. The ordinance says it would help balance the budget for a county facing a multi-million dollar shortfall, but--surprise--the unions don't like it.

“We understand the gravity of the crisis," says Paul Zilly, a spokesman for Teamsters Local 117, but asking the unions to give up more won’t solve the county’s budget problems. Many of the problems lie in bad management and the fact that the county has limited taxing authority, he adds. "We’re just asking the county to not always be looking to balance the budget on the backs of organized labor,” he says.

At the council’s meeting this morning, representatives of the Teamsters, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, and the Service Employees International Union showed up to testify against some parts of Lambert’s proposal. But nobody got a chance to speak because the bill was moved to committee without a chance for public comment--which left union representatives in formal business attire a little confused.

If passed, the ordinance would kick in during “times of flat or declining revenues" to set cost of living adjustments for county employees on a scale of from six to zero percent per year (the minimum right now is two percent). The county would also reopen labor contracts with unions when economic forecasts project flat or declining revenues for the next year, and the county’s bargaining team would push for a set of pretty tightfisted rules—no cost of living adjustment, unpaid furlough days, wage reductions, and higher employee contributions to health care, for example.

With those restrictions written into law—and affecting all bad fiscal years, not just 2010—the county's union employees could lose substantial bargaining power. “We’re looking for the maintenance of good faith bargaining, and if the negotiators’ hands are tied, that makes it hard,” says Debbie Foley, a union representative for the Service Employees International Union.

Unions, along with the county's several hundred nonunion workers, accepted ten unpaid furlough days this year.

The council's Committee of the Whole will consider the measure as early as next Wednesday. Union members have vowed to be there. "Our members are going to come out in force, no doubt about it," Zilly says. "They're eager to get out there and get their perspective heard."