By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org
    
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The Anchorage Education Association is leading the fight to repeal new labor laws that curb collective bargaining and union abuses in the city.
    
AlaskaThe irony is the law doesn’t apply to the AEA’s members.
    
The legislation, known as AO-37, was approved by the Anchorage Municipal Assembly at the urging of Mayor Dan Sullivan to dial back the power of the city’s government unions. The ordinance eliminates the ability to strike and binding arbitration, outlaws bonuses and incentives in new contracts, and limits wage increases to 1 percent above the five-year rate of inflation, Alaska Pride reports.
    
The new law, approved by the city Assembly March 26, applies to all of the city’s unions, but not to employees of the Anchorage School District.
    
Yet the Anchorage Education Association, the city’s teachers union, is leading a petition drive that would put the new rules up for a public vote, KTVA television station reports.
    
“We depend on collective bargaining to be open and balanced so we can bargain our contracts, and we understand if that stops being what’s normal, we’re going to be left standing out alone with a unique position and we don’t want that,” AEA President Andy Holleman told KTVA.

Holleman was among two sponsors of a referendum petition submitted to the city clerk for approval Wednesday. If Holleman and his fellow critics of AO-37 can collect the 7,100 signatures necessary to put the measure up for a public vote within 60 days of when the ordinance was passed, the new rules will be suspended until the public vote, the television station reports.
    
If they can’t collect the signatures within 60 days, which would be in late May, then they would get an additional 30 days to collect the signatures but the ordinance would remain in effect.
    
City assembly members told KTVA they believe the unions will manage to collect enough signatures to put AO-37 up for a public vote, which will take place in a special election unless the assembly voluntarily suspends the ordinance until the next regular election in April 2014.
    
Anchorage Assembly Chair Ernie Hall told KTVA he hopes to “go ahead, do a special election, get the question answered, and move on with life.”
    
However it turns out, it seems likely voters will make the final determination.