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Health & Fitness

Connecticut Public Service Unions: Playing Chicken With Taxpayer Money

Connecticut's Public Service Unions Play A Deadly Game of Chicken With the Governor...

Watching the negotiations between Governor Dannel Malloy and Connecticut State employees reminds me of the “Chicken Race” scene from the James Dean classic, Rebel Without A Cause.

Dean plays Jim Stark, the new kid in town trying to fit in. He is confronted by local bully, Buzz Gunderson, who challenges him to a “chicken race” where the two will drive their cars towards the edge of a cliff. The first one to jump out is the chicken- the one that stays in the car longest- the winner. When Gunderson tries to extricate himself from the car, his leather jacket gets caught in the door handle, making his escape impossible and his demise, inevitable. Dean jumps out right before the edge, but bully Gunderson stays in the car and plummets to his death. I guess he can claim he won. 

Similarly, Malloy, the new kid in Hartford, is trying to close a two billion dollar budget gap (having already taken care of another two billion in tax increases). To date, the government unions continue to dig in their heels- trying to bully the Governor on his proposed concessions on pensions and benefits. As both sides drive towards the precipice, waiting at the cliff’s edge, is the threatened layoff of over 4,700 state workers. Depending on whose numbers you use, this amounts to between 5 and 10 percent of the entire state government workforce.

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The main obstacle to Malloy ’s attempt at performing this civic gastric bypass on the Nutmeg State’s insatiable appetite for spending is the institutionalization of these public service employee unions.  The long-term contractual agreements that protect jobs and provide their members with rich pension and benefit plans, have so hamstrung our state budget, that they are more aptly characterized as collective bludgeoning, rather than bargaining, agreements. 

In the private sector, the collective bargaining process amounts to a fight over a pie- a pie that is basically, finite. Management must take into consideration operating expenses, taxes, capital improvements, dividends and profits when carving up the wage and benefit slices of the pie with unionized workers. On the other hand, unions try to extract pieces of the pie based on the value of the workers’ labor vis-à-vis the ingredients that make up the pie.

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Both sides sit across the table from each other and do battle. How the pie is split, is determined by whoever holds the better bargaining position.  In bad economic times, like now, both sides could end up fighting over the crust and crumbs. 

Not so in the case of public service unions. In that arena, collective bargaining is corrupted by the interjection of a third party; one that produces neither wealth nor tangible goods – the politician.

The corruption comes in the form of payback. Once elected, the politician must return the favor by protecting existing jobs, creating new ones, and increasing salaries and benefits. As a result, the collective bargaining process becomes inherently, unbalanced. The parties sitting across the negotiating table from each other are just that- at a party.  The pie is not finite. In fact, it is not a pie at all, but more like a wedding cake- multi-tiered and with no expense spared in baking it.  The tab for funding these perpetually entrenched government institutions is paid by those totally excluded from the collective bargaining process, the taxpayers.

The question here is, as we move closer to the July layoff deadline, will the state unions blink first and give in to Malloy’s concessions, or will they drive 4,700 of their union brothers and sisters off the cliff in an effort to hang on to their political turf?

Ironically, Democrat Malloy relied heavily on government union support, both as Mayor of Stamford and in last November’s gubernatorial bid. Perhaps, in this instance, it is fair to say that the Governor’s “chickens” have come home to roost.

         
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