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.
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Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton\u2019s Main Street in 1985.
Provided
For Hermans, the award has prompted some reflection about why he has spent so much of his life involved in community projects.
“I was thinking about it this morning: Why do I do what I do?” he said. “And I think no matter what I’ve done, whether it’s been school board or rail trail, I’m trying to be useful to the communities I’m associated with.”
Hermans is perhaps best known as the longtime co-founder and steward of Oblong Books in Millerton, a business that began almost by accident. He and his former partner, Holly Nelson, were living in Millerton and looking for something to do during the winter. They had been painting houses, including the Grange Hall in Millerton, a job Hermans got through his aunt, who belonged to the Grange.
At the time, Hermans was also working in insurance for his father, doing collections.
“It was fine except I was doing collections, and it really kind of left me cold,” he said.
He and Nelson began thinking about what they might do together. Nelson was an avid reader, while Hermans had studied journalism and had worked in a record store. They noticed a chain of book and record stores operating elsewhere in the Hudson Valley and decided to follow that model.
And so Oblong was born.
Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton’s Main Street in 1985.Provided
“We really learned it by the seat of our pants,” Hermans said.
The business would eventually become a beloved and integral part of Millerton’s commercial life. But although Hermans may have learned the book business as he went, his affinity for retail — and for the connections that happen across a counter — had begun much earlier.
As a child, his second-grade teacher operated a little cardboard pencil shop in the classroom, and Hermans still remembers the satisfaction of selling a pencil for a nickel.
“I really liked selling somebody a pencil for a nickel,” he recalled. “I can remember that experience, and it was so pleasant.”
Later, while living in Arizona, he helped establish a food co-op and worked at the counter.
“I kind of knew that I liked doing that kind of thing,” he said. “It’s a nice way to be pleasant with people, but without making too much commitment to them.”
His relationship with Millerton also predates Oblong. His grandparents lived in the village, and he first came to Millerton as a baby. Over the years, he has watched the town change through several generations.
He remembers a Millerton with a much broader array of businesses, when stores such as Delson’s, the Main Street department store that stood for nearly 40 years in what is now Millerton’s Antiques Center, seemed to carry almost everything a resident might need.
“You could find everything from a set of dishes to a shotgun,” he recalled.
The rise of shopping malls changed that kind of downtown retail, he said, but Millerton has remained a lively commercial village.
“For us, it’s been a great place to have business,” Hermans said. “It’s a busy village.”
For Hermans, running a store was never simply about selling books and records. It was a way of being part of a place.
Music has remained another constant. Hermans continues to sell music at Oblong and hosts the radio program “New Harmony” on WKZE. The business of selling music has changed dramatically over the years, particularly with the rise of streaming, but Hermans has adapted.
He was initially reluctant to bring vinyl records back into the store because of their expense. But about four or five years ago, he began stocking LPs again, and they have become the main form of music the store sells.
He finds that many of the customers buying them are reconnecting with music they loved years ago.
“I do best with classic albums that people may have had when they were young,” he said. “And now that they’re retired, they want to hear it again.”
Hermans still reviews between 700 and 1,200 new music releases each week through the store’s distributor, Alliance Entertainment, carefully deciding what belongs on Oblong’s shelves.
That same commitment to place has led Hermans into a wide range of community projects. His work with the Harlem Valley Rail Trail is among the efforts he mentions when reflecting on his years of civic involvement. He has also served on the school board and has been involved with the Millerton Business Alliance and the Irondale Schoolhouse. He is now involved with The New Pine Plains Herald, which he sees as complementary to the work of The Millerton News and The Lakeville Journal.
“I really think that the important thing about this award is that people understand what a newspaper does to connect them to their community,” he said. “And if that means anything to their lives, they gotta support it.”
Hermans knew Mary Lou and Robert Estabrook and remembers them as people who were deeply conscious of their responsibilities to the community.
“They were really nice folks,” he said. “They were very conscious of what their role in the community was.”
There is, in fact, still plenty on his plate. Hermans admits he needs to scale back because he has taken on more than his current abilities can comfortably accommodate.
“To be given this award is very special,” he added. “But I don’t feel like I’m done.”
This article has been changed to reflect that Hermans and Nelson were partners. A prior version states that they were married.
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