It appears that Governor Ned Lamont and teachers – which is
to say, teacher unions – may be at loggerheads. Lamont wants schools in
Connecticut to open in the fall because he believes, rightly, that
tele-education is insufficient education. Many teachers, if they could break
away from union propaganda, might agree with him.
There is little indication that young people, even when they
are exposed to Coronavirus, suffer serious harm. School closings and forced
sequestration, much of the data shows, are attended with a variety of serious,
sometimes fatal, problems. Who then, in this head-butting contest, will
prevail, the governor or state unions?
Based on previous head-buttings between Connecticut’s fourth
branch of government, state employee unions, and Democrat governors, the state
unions appear to have a winning edge in push and shove negotiations.
Governor Dannel Malloy and state unions were on the
friendliest of terms. Indeed, Malloy gained credibility, campaign funds, and
extra campaign hands among unions, by marching in strike lines, as shown in the
picture above. The state contracts Governor Malloy unilaterally negotiated with
unions, affirmed by a Democrat dominated General Assembly, provided raises
after three years and a no-layoff
provision binding on his successor, Lamont, until 2021.
It is extremely doubtful that Malloy would have assented to
such provisions if he had chosen to run for governor following his second term.
The surest way to escape the inevitable consequences of ruinous policies is to
pass the buck to the next governor and legislature in line.
That is why the unions were able to tell Lamont to go pound
sand when he requested, very politely, that the unions offer up concessions
during the Connecticut’s economic death spiral, which began years before the
“Chinese plague,” President Donald Trump’s recent term for Coronavirus,
slithered from Wuhan, China to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s New York, and from there
to Connecticut’s larger cities.
Across the nation, Connecticut has been known for some time
as a “sinkhole state,” because the state’s labor costs have long exceed its
ability to satisfy the terms of court enforced contracts.
Connecticut was supposed to have provided money to pay off
benefits costs for state unions from a fund that too frequently had been
plundered by the Democrat dominated General Assembly and shifted to the state’s
General Fund. The plundered pension liability fund, in arrears by more than 60
billion dollars, has been for many years bone dry.
State contracts remove necessary budget adjustments from a
democratic theater of action, the state’s legislative and executive offices, to
a judicial theatre of action, state courts, which are bound to uphold contractual
terms, whatever damage is inflicted upon the state by such contracts.
For these reasons, Lamont, the sinkhole governor of a
sinkhole state, through no fault of his own, is very much at a disadvantage in
his negotiations, if any, with unions. The state can solve all the problems
cited above in a single sweep by deep-sixing in the future all contracts with
unions upon the termination of present contracts. Connecticut is one of the few
states that allow unions to arrange with union-friendly governors and
legislators legally binding contracts that force the General Assembly to adjust
budgets to satisfy the demands of SEBAC, the state union conglomerate
authorized to negotiate contracts with Connecticut’s governors and its
union-friendly, progressive, state legislators.
When President Franklin Roosevelt was invited by President
of the National Federation of Federal Employees Luther C. Stewart to permit the
unionization of federal workers, he wisely, unambiguously, and adamantly said
no. Roosevelt,
certainly no conservative, wrote: “All Government employees should realize that 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. The very nature and purposes of Government make it
impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the
employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The
employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives
in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are
governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish
policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.” It is doubtful
that Connecticut’s State House gatekeeper, Speaker Joe Arsimowicz, employed by
a union, or other Democrat progressive legislators, would credit Roosevelt’s
misgivings.
But Roosevelt was right, and we in Connecticut are now feasting
on the bitter root of his cautionary warning. Every dollar of tax money spent
in the state should be raised, disbursed and adjusted by a small “d” democratic
legislature answerable during election periods to the people. It is the whole
people through their representatives, and not unions colluding with progressive
governors, who are and should be the real employers of state workers.
In addition to Coronavirus, Connecticut has been plagued for
many years by legislative cowards who hope to escape the justifiable wrath of
the people at election time by renting out to various political sub-groups,
unions among them, their own constitutional responsibility to pass general laws
applying to the whole people that are just and equitable. Justice is the giving
to all what is due them under the law without favor or partiality. And equity
under the law requires that lawmakers produce laws and regulations that apply
equally to all and do not favor special interests.
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