Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy has roundly criticized some of his fellow governors--especially Chris Christie in New Jersey and Scott Walker in Wisconsin--for their supposedly overly bombastic and harsh approach to dealing with their state's public employee unions. Last week, however, Christie and Walker celebrated victories, while Malloy suffered a humiliating defeat.
Malloy argued that "shared sacrifice" was required to address the budget crisis in the states. Therefore, rather than call for restrictions on collective bargaining and cuts to state employee wages, healthcare, and pensions he said such things could only work if they were balanced by tax increases. Now, after months of apparently harmonious negotiations (the content of which remained largely opaque to normal citizens), Connecticut's unions have rejected Malloy's deal and left the governor's budget in tatters. So much for the view that the unions understood the dire straits their government employers were in and would work with them in good faith.
With Christie celebrating a major deal on pensions and healthcare in the Garden State and Scott Walker celebrating a court decision that allows his restrictions on collective bargaining to go into effect, it appears that only stern political pressure that raises the stakes and engages voters has a chance of getting real unions concessions.
With Christie celebrating a major deal on pensions and healthcare in the Garden State and Scott Walker celebrating a court decision that allows his restrictions on collective bargaining to go into effect, it appears that only stern political pressure that raises the stakes and engages voters has a chance of getting real unions concessions.
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