Scrambling for a piece of the budget pie

Giving public employees the right to bargain collectively isn’t a very old idea or a very good one, but it’s not something you take back, certainly not in Connecticut. In fact, Connecticut Democrats and a few Republicans in the Legislature are making some ill-timed noise about expanding public employee bargaining. The right of union workers to bargain collectively with their private-sector companies was well established long before Wisconsin became the first state to give the same right to public employees in 1959. Today, nearly half of the states, excepting the late Confederacy, allow their union workers to bargain.The 1940s and ’50s was an era of increasing growth and power for unions, which accounts for the ease with which labor won this victory for public workers. Forgotten by then was an earlier, pointed warning from Franklin Roosevelt, labor’s great presidential friend: “All government employees should realize the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management,” wrote FDR to the head of a government employees’ union in 1937.Roosevelt was right. When labor and management engage in bargaining in the private sector, there are clearly drawn sides; when a public employee union bargains with a governor and legislature, there are not. Labor holds cards marked “votes” and “financial support,” which means one thing: Advantage, labor.Roosevelt wasn’t the only labor champion opposed to collective bargaining for government workers. As late as 1955, George Meany, the president of the AFL-CIO, wrote in The New York Times, “It is impossible to bargain with the government.” And, just four years after the governor of Wisconsin signed the first law allowing government employees to bargain collectively, Frank Zeilder, the socialist mayor of Milwaukee, told a Milwaukee newspaper, “Government unions can mean considerable loss of control over the budget and hence over tax rates.” In Connecticut, Gov. Dannel Malloy isn’t going after the public employees’ collective bargaining rights but he is trying to take back some of what collective bargaining has wrought. At the same time, his own party, with some Republican fellow travelers in the Legislature, is thinking about expanding it to managers, legislative employees and even graduate assistants at the state universities. Talk about brilliant timing.A couple of weeks ago, the Labor and Public Employees committee gave bipartisan, yes, bipartisan approval to a bill that gives bargaining rights to most managers, the aforementioned legislative employees and graduate assistants and state Capitol police. Only high-ranking cops, lieutenants and above, and some top managers would not be allowed to unionize, The Connecticut Mirror reported. Don’t forget, state employee unions already have professionals like attorneys and accountants among its members, something you’ll rarely, if ever, find in the private sector.Other committees have been equally busy at mischief making in apparent conflict with the governor’s budget reduction aims. The Human Services Committee has approved a bill extending collective bargaining to self-employed personal-care attendants paid by the state through Medicaid. And not to be outdone, the Education Committee is considering a bill that would award bargaining rights to day-care providers getting state reimbursement. Hopefully, all this is being done so that the Democratic majority can later tell labor it tried — but failed — in a bad year. We’ll see.Connecticut has been last in job creation every year since 1989, but that didn’t stop the Labor Committee from approving a bill that would give Connecticut another first: the first state to mandate paid sick leave for companies employing more than 50 workers. This measure had been supported by the governor, but he seems to be having second, sensible thoughts. His spokeswoman said Malloy supports the concept but makes no promises before he sees the bill.At the same time, Malloy, the Democrat these unions helped elect, has been traveling the state, warning them their failure to agree to $2 billion in concessions could result in terrible budget cuts that would include thousands of state employee layoffs. The governor appears to be very serious, so serious that he seems willing to sacrifice a second term. So far, the seriousness has not extended to the legislative branch, which has never shown an inclination to sacrifice much of anything.Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.