Where We Live: Roundtable On Shared Sacrifice

Actually, the governor has

Actually, the governor has made it pretty clear he will retaliate against the workers who voted against the deal, most specifically corrections officers. As a union member (CSU-AAUP), I don't see that we have abused our bargaining rights or not shared in the pain. We made huge concessions under Governor Rell's administration already, and if anyone had asked the rank-and-file, we'd have agreed to continue furlough days (immediate savings) before taking a plan that had some horrendous medical provisions that are not even proven to save the state money. The Office of Fiscal Analysis said it could not verify the majority of savings Malloy said was in the concession package. I work very hard for the state. I am not going to be treated like its prisoners, though. A tax on the wealthiest people in this state was THE solution--and the governor didn't even make it part of the solution. Taxing spas may impact the rich, but not all that much. Anyone who can afford to waste money on spas, yoga and pet grooming is earning enough to pay a sales tax.

Are we stuck with this?

I've been hearing what friends and colleagues have to say about this deal that we're stuck with, and it's mostly over simplified. This is not what anyone wanted; this is a bad budget for everyone. However, this has been the most transparent and well communicated plan going back to Malloy's campaign. We knew everyone was going to have to "share the pain" from the beginning.
What I find to be the big issue is the amount of power the unions basically have over the rest of the state. The fact that the unions rejected the deal (even though the majority approved!), and that negatively effects everyone, public sector or not, makes me sick. I appreciate the fact that public workers are represented. However, this is not protected state union employees from unfair labor practices; this is union leaders unethically leveraging power in order to protect the higher ups from having to share the pain of this recession with the rest of the state. Even though there will be job cuts for public employees, there will be no jobs cut of the people that worked so hard to make this deal rejected.
What's going on in states like Wisconsin is too much, but these types of situations make me understand why conservatives are attacking unions. There are other ways to fix it that to take away collective bargaining rights, but something needs to be put in place so they do not abuse those rights.

The Union Vote Sealed the Deal?

Why is it a "fact" that unions had to make concessions to close the budget gap? Why is it not also a fact that raising the taxes on the top 2% of the wealthiest people in CT could also close the budget gap.
FACT: The wealthiest 1% of taxpayers pay less than half the share of their income on state and local taxes (4.9%) that middle-income (10%) and lower-income (12%) taxpayers pay.
FACT: The average annual pension for Connecticut's retired state employees is $31,080. For people on the current Tier IIA pension, payments are less than half that amount.
FACT: The mandatory mail-order pharmacy was illegal for over 20 years, but in the Malloy/SEBAC deal state employees would have had to purchase all their drugs except for one-time prescriptions from CareMark/CVS. Local pharmacies, Walmart, Walgreens, Target, Stop'n'Shop, etc would all lose substantial pharmacy business while our money went out of state.
FACT: State workers would have had to pay a penalty for not joining the Health Enhancement Plan. "Don't you want to be healthy?" union leaders asked us. The real question is, "What's wrong with having your colonoscopy required and if you don't comply we'll report it to the state comptroller?" How many non-state employees would like their decisions to have or not have medical procedures taken away from them and then have that reported to the state? My guess: not one.
FACT: The state continues to waste more than $4 million annually for a death penalty that is almost never applied.

Listener Email

No one seems to understand.

The problem is not the wage freeze. The issue is opening the sebac agreement in terms of healthcare and pension that will change dramatically the landscape for those planning to retire before 2017, and that is a very large block of voters. In the proposed deal those workers were offered nothing and have the least amount of time to recover.

The offer of no layoffs was sweet for the younger workers, but they have time to adjust to the loss and to the drastic early retirement penalty.

Wage freezes and furlough days would clearly pass. That would help this budget.

We can worry about the 2017 deal later.

Listener Email from Jim

I can't call in right now, but I want to offer an opposing viewpoint to one of your recent callers, who among other things had a fairly negative view of our state workers.

I am not unsympathetic to those who are out of work, or otherwise "feeling the pain". But where were these critics in the good times when private industry salaries were high. State workers did not share in the excess, why SHOULD they share in the pain? The state workers I know are good, decent people, who work hard. They took state jobs because of a sense of duty to their community and for the security it provides. They chose their path. The safer path. Others chose differently. Those others should not get to force state workers to pay for their poor choice. Either that, or when the economy does come back, I want to hear a discussion from all these people ponying up and calling out for state workers to share in the surplus!