The Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) recently released its 2021 annual report. PERC is the independent state agency that implements Washington’s public sector collective bargaining laws and resolves public sector labor disputes.

The report outlines PERC’s efforts to create a new law enforcement arbitrator roster, updates from PERC’s Negotiation Project (which looks into the negotiation and decision-making techniques), and the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the agency and the demand for PERC’s services.

The report mentions that 2020 saw:

• The lowest number of requests to mediate collective bargaining agreements in agency history;
• The lowest number of unfair labor practice complaints since 1987; and
• The lowest number of conflict prevention service requests since 2014.

PERC saw all of these tick up in 2021, though mediation and conflict prevention requests were still lower than normal.

Additionally, the report outlines how representation and new organizing activities remained steady, how PERC’s all-remote mediation kept up with historical averages on getting agreements, and how parties filing complaints have done a better job in the last two years of avoiding deficient complaints – resulting in less work for the parties and the agency as complaints were mostly filed correctly the first time.

Finally, the report overviews several key adjudication and legal decisions from the past year.