As a city leader in several states, Eric Keck has experienced the spectrum of unions.

At Post Falls, where Keck is the city administrator, there are no unions.

"I think that as long as we are treating our employees with honesty and fairness as well as collaborate with them on benefits and compensation, we would not have any need for collective bargaining," he said.

"While we cannot always satisfy all of our employees at all times, we try the best we can do with the available resources to treat everyone appropriately."

Keck has also worked in Ohio, a strong union state. He said groups there were aggressive to obtain more compensation and benefits and less attention was spent on accountability, work quality and employee performance.

"In all cases, the collective bargaining contracts were negotiated behind closed doors between the union groups and city representatives and then ratified by the city council without any public input," he said.

"After several years of sitting at the negotiating table, I learned that collective bargaining was really no bargain for the public as they were mostly unaware of the terms of the agreements and the pay and benefits received by the membership of these groups."

Keck said he believes unions have their place. But he predicted in the late '90s that many of the agreements would create "unsustainable fiscal liabilities" that would ultimately hamper a community's ability to fund core services and necessary projects.

"The expectation with every contract renewal was, 'What will the city give me this year?' instead of, 'How can we work collaboratively to ensure that services are delivered effectively for fair compensation?" he said. "I am not anti-union, but I feel that perhaps today they have become somewhat of an anachronism as pay, benefits and working conditions are certainly much better than they were at the turn of the century where business and government exploited workers."

Keck said he hopes that involving employees in the budget process and on benefit committees prevails over the "culture of entitlement."

"I experienced some very ugly behaviors through my interaction with the various collective bargaining groups that I dealt with in Ohio ..." he said, referring to refusals to work within the job's duties and abuse of equipment.

In Idaho, a right-to-work state, cities and counties do not have to formally recognize a collective bargaining unit. If one forms, they need to approach the council or governing board to have them formally recognize the unit.

There is also no requirement to automatically recognize and negotiate with a proposed union, so it is more difficult to create one in Idaho than other states.

"Our council most likely would not formally recognize a bargaining unit as there would be no benefit to the public in doing so," Keck said.

Most cities have decided against having unions.

"The city of Post Falls has decided so far that allowing an employee union is not in the best interest of the community," Police Chief Scot Haug said. "It basically boils down to the philosophy of the community and the leadership."

Haug said some employees discussed forming a union in the early 1990s during informal meetings, but the group decided to not pursue the idea.

Haug said that, generally speaking, cities with unions pay employees more, which helps with retention, but that means less is spent on services.

"In some cities, unions have nearly bankrupted cities due to the over-the-top benefits they negotiated during good times," Haug said. "Now that the economy is struggling, these same employees are not willing to give up any of what they have."

Kootenai County has never looked at using a union, as far as Commissioner Todd Tondee knows.

"Why should we?" Tondee said. "Everything's working OK."

The county sets wages for its 792 employees through a system developed by a consultant years ago, Tondee said, which is based on the pay scales of similar entities.

"We set those by what our competition, what like businesses are doing. We adjust and then we set a pay scale from there," he said, adding that this process was established before his time. "We're supposed to do a study on the pay every few years, to see where we're at, according to the market."

The county is one of the least paid government entities in the area, Tondee acknowledged.

"It is very difficult to maintain and keep good employees," he said, adding that the county has frozen wages for the past two years because of the economy. "The sheriff's department has a hard time, and 911 and the assessors office have had some complaints."

The hiring process is a simple advertising and interview procedure, he said.

Firing county employees involves the typical steps of documenting issues, giving employees opportunities to correct them and then terminating if no improvement happens.

"They need to be not doing their job," Tondee stated as the standard reason for termination.

When economic conditions, changes in technology or unforeseen circumstances require reductions in force, the county follows its Reduction-in-Force and Recall policy.

Reductions must be approved in writing by elected officials, with two weeks notice given to employees.

Increases due to recall are guided by management's discretion.

Tondee said there haven't been problems with the systems in place.

"Our operations are fine," he said. "We don't try to fix something that we don't think is broken."

Right to Work

n In Idaho, a right-to-work state, cities and counties do not have to formally recognize a collective bargaining unit. If one forms, they need to approach the council or governing board to have them formally recognize the unit.

There is also no requirement to automatically recognize and negotiate with a proposed union, so it is more difficult to create one in Idaho than some other states.