July 26, 2019

Coalition
of City
Unions
Co-Chairs
Kenny Stuart
Amy Bowles
Coalition Members
AFSCME #2
Firefighters #27
IAM #160
PTE #17
Pacific NW Regional
Council of Carpenters
Seattle Municipal Court
Marshals Guild
Seattle Police Dispatchers
Guild
Seattle Police Guild
Seattle Police Mgmt.
Assoc.
UA 32 PLG
Joint Crafts Council
Boilermakers #104
HERE #8
IATSE #15
IBEW #46
Inland Boatman’s Union
IUOE #286

Seattle City Council
City Hall
600 – 4th Avenue
Seattle, WA 98124-4025
Dear Councilmembers:
The Seattle Coalition of City Unions (CCU) is writing in response to your letter dated July 15, and
in support of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild (SPOG) as a CCU member.
The CCU wants to make it perfectly clear that we strongly disagree with any unilateral attempts to
reopen SPOG’s current collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The CBA was bargained in good
faith over the course of several years and signed by the Mayor and Seattle City Council. Any and
all efforts to put undue pressure on SPOG to reopen this agreement are inappropriate. The
members of SPOG have the right to determine, on their own terms, what course of action they
want to pursue.
The CCU unquestionably supports police accountability and recognizes the successful efforts of
the City and SPOG to reach full compliance with the 2012 consent decree with the Department of
Justice. As you know, one of the central tenets of collective bargaining is confidentiality of the
negotiations until a tentative agreement has been reached. That confidentiality ensures that parties
to the process can have open, frank and suppositional discussions at the bargaining table that
would be next to impossible to have in an open forum.
Although there were pressures from 3rd parties to “daylight” or open the negotiations to the public
during the negotiations, those pressures were successfully held at bay. The CCU is also writing
today because we have concerns that those external pressures have returned in light of Judge
Robart’s recent opinion and that there are anti-union forces that want to renegotiate SPOG’s
Collective Bargaining Agreement in public. This would set a bad precedent that could negatively
impact all of the Seattle City employees that we represent. As Councilmember Mosqueda herself
has said, we remain “uncompromising in our commitment to the principles and importance of
collective bargaining” and we support SPOG’s rights in this instance. There are a variety of
controversial issues that affect our members at the City of Seattle but the members of the CCU are
uncompromising in our unified support for workers’ rights.
As members of the Coalition of City Unions, we proudly stand with our brothers and sisters at
SPOG and all Seattle City Employees who make Seattle function and provide essential city
services each and every day in our communities. Bargaining in good faith by both parties is crucial
to the labor-management relationship and we want to ensure that this principle is a priority of our
city council members.
Sincerely,

Laborer’s Union #1239
Painters District Co #5
Sheetmetal Workers #66
Signpainters #1094
Teamsters #117
Teamsters #763

Kenny Stuart
CCU Co-Chair
IAFF Local 17
cc: Mayor Jenny Durkan

Shaun Van Eyk
CCU Co-Chair
PROTEC 17