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| Lamont, Gunn and Luciano |
Luciano’s presence
at the press conference was not inadvertent. He was there to commend Lamont’s
new transportation improvement plan on behalf of some union workers who stood
to benefit by it – monetarily.
“We have been
assured by the Lamont administration,” Luciano said, “that this work will be
built using project labor agreements. That’s important because it will protect
taxpayers by eliminating costly delays due to labor conflicts or a shortage of
skilled workers.” And, not incidentally, the project labor agreements will
enrich a union membership largely responsible for electing to high office
Democrat politicians who, like Lamont, are eager to shower with benefices state
workers whose political contributions and campaign activities have hoisted them
into office.
“Project labor
agreements,” according to the Yankee Institute, “are collective bargaining agreements with a contractor that require
the contractor to pay union wages and abide by union rules when completing a
specific construction project, essentially guaranteeing the contractor will
have to use union labor.”
Translated into
proletarian-speak, project labor agreements inflate the cost of labor for
transportation improvement jobs among non-union contractors so that their labor
cost payout will be equal to the payout of union labor. More precisely, Project
labor agreements effectively unionize non-unionized organizations and prevent cost savings that would
occur if private contractors were not hobbled by such agreements.
That is one of the
reasons Gunn showed up at the event in her Liberty Cap bearing the words “No
Tolls.” She and other grass roots organizers would rather the state save money in labor costs. And the savings – no one has yet toted them up – will be worth far
more than those touted by Luciano when “costly delays due to labor
conflicts or a shortage of skilled workers” are eliminated. Luciano does not
pause to reflect whether “costly delays due to labor conflicts” might be
eliminated by eliminating court enforced labor agreements.
Lamont and Luciano
want taxpayers to pay more in labor costs because both parties favoring tolls and
project labor agreements – elected progressive Democrats and unions – stand to
gain through the mutually beneficial transaction. Unions are protected from a
fair competition that might reduce labor costs, and Democrat government
officials, who tend to treat public employee unions more or less as a fourth
branch of state government, reap rewards in campaign cash and boots-on-the-ground
campaign assistance.
Is this mutually
beneficial arrangement a quid pro quo
in disguise? The Latin phrase means “something for something.” There is nothing
inherently evil or immoral about quid pro quos. An honorable quid pro quo is
involved in any market purchase. When you pay your mortgage and the bank that
owns the mortgage permits you the illusion that you are the owner of the house,
Mr. Quid and Mr. Quo are both satisfied. However, any plowshare may be beaten
into a sword. Just as there are honorable and crooked politicians, so there are
honorable and crooked quid pro quos. And the worst quid pro quo is the legal
and crooked quid pro quo, the one written in devil’s ink.
There are, here and there, glimmers of hope that the voting
public will no longer tolerate business as usual. Gunn is by no means alone. In
the Journal Inquirer, columnist Chris
Powell calls for significant reforms: “Tolls will let state
government continue to overlook its mistaken and expensive policies with
education, welfare, and government employees, where ever more spending fails to
improve learning, worsens the dependence of the unskilled, and makes public
administration less efficient and accountable. Connecticut needs profound
reform in these respects, and enacting tolls will only reduce the pressure on
elected officials to choose the public interest over special interests.”
Speaking directly to
project labor agreements, president of the Connecticut Chapter of the Associated
Builders and Contractors Chris Fryxell notes, “To announce right out of the
gate that all this work is going to union contractors is offensive… We’re
talking about a lot of taxpayer money… Everyone should compete on a level
playing field. Competition reduces costs for taxpayers.”
Those who can bring
about cost-saving reforms in Connecticut are willing, but the political flesh
is weak. Democrats in the General Assembly are becoming more, not less, the
servants of special interest groups that have, over a period of years in
Connecticut, captured the democratic citadel. Unless they are turned aside, we
in Connecticut can only look forward to a future blighted by increasing taxes
and spending – at which point the only choice open to the middle class in the
state will be to vote with their feet.
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