Reject union deal, restore democracy
W ho comes out better in Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s contract agreement with the state employee unions? The margin by which union members approved the deal says it all: 5 to 1.
Union leader Lori Pelletier says state employees approved the agreement out of civic virtue. That’s a lovely bedtime story but if the agreement really struck them as terribly disadvantageous — that is, if the agreement was a victory for taxpayers — union members would have rejected it.
The agreement may achieve the most savings that could be arranged within the Democratic Party, to which the governor and the unions both belong. It reduces pension costs for state government’s new hires, and of course pension expenses have been exploding because of state government’s long failure to put enough money in the pension fund. But most of the savings promised by the agreement are not really savings at all but just the suspension of pay raises, money not yet being spent.
In exchange state employee benefits would be locked in for another 10 years and layoffs would be prohibited for four. There is no benefit to the public in tying the government’s hands for that long. Indeed, there is no public interest in giving state government’s own employees such priority within government in the first place. No services to the public, not even services to the most innocent and helpless needy, come with such guarantees. Services are always discretionary.
That’s why, with state government at the breaking point, the General Assembly should defeat the governor’s deal with the unions, as the unusually large Republican minorities in the General Assembly maintain, and make structural changes in state government, including the direct legislation of the costs and terms of government employment, achieving far greater savings. The governor’s deal with the unions signifies only continued subordination of the government to a mere special interest, subordination in which the people of Connecticut must ask the unions for permission even to have a government.
Announcing their approval of the deal this week, the unions seemed to understand that this bigger issue — the public’s sovereignty — is in danger of being recognized. For union officials carried signs reading “Collective bargaining works for Connecticut.”
But collective bargaining within the government itself only impairs democracy, only removes government’s control over its costs, which is exactly the objective. If the governor’s deal with the unions takes effect, democracy in Connecticut will be impaired for at least another 10 years.
Hailing his members for their supposed civic virtue this week, union leader Salvatore Luciano said they are suffering “concessions fatigue.” Yet despite the supposed concessions state employees have made, their total cost keeps rising.
Meanwhile the rest of Connecticut is suffering tax fatigue, the current state administration having imposed in the last six years the state’s two biggest tax increases in history.
Even now state government is without a budget because Democratic legislators and the governor disagree on how to raise taxes again, the governor seeking to force municipalities to raise property taxes to help finance teacher pensions, the legislators seeking to raise the sales tax and give the revenue to the towns so they can pay their new pension costs with that.
Enough already. The governor’s deal with the unions is defended as “the best we can do” but it’s not. The best we can do is to restore democracy to Connecticut. It can be done if just a few Democratic legislators dare to join the Republicans in rejecting the union deal.