CLT UPDATE
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Mass. Public Employee Unions Try One Last Scam
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A marathon hearing Tuesday on bills aimed at
helping municipalities reduce the crushing burden of health care
costs illustrated bipartisan support for the goal but a continuing
divide over how to achieve it and claims that the bills don’t
address overall insurance costs....
Since 2000, the cost of employee health care has
wiped out increases in state aid from 1993 to 2000 that brought
school districts up to targeted funding levels, according to Linda
Noonan, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance
for Education. From 2000 to 2007, annual health care costs in school
budgets grew by $1 billion, $300 more than the rise in Chapter 70
school aid, the chief pot of state funding for local schools, she
said....
Gov. Patrick’s plan requires municipalities and
union to expedite collective bargaining to negotiate a new health
plan equivalent in cost to the care state employees receive through
the Group Insurance Commission. If an agreement is not reached
within a limited period to be specified by regulation, a
municipality would be required to join the Group Insurance
Commission or implement a local plan equivalent in cost to the state
plan.
Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation President
Michael Widmer said reforms are necessary to preserve local
government services and jobs and noted the pending proposals don’t
even attempt to address billions of dollars in unfunded municipal
retiree health care liabilities. Widmer said taxpayers are footing
the bill for “the most generous health plans in the state” while
seeing their own health insurance benefits and local services erode
and paying increased property taxes “They are being hit four ways,”
he said. “This is an absolute unsustainable situation.” ...
At the hearing, union advocates invoked the
continuing battle in Wisconsin over collective bargaining, as well
as the recent revelation of an $11 million payout to former Blue
Cross Blue Shield head Cleve Killingsworth....
Lang said the union proposal would do little to
help cities and towns. “They will not scratch the surface of the
problem,” he said. “We need to really be able to have the
flexibility to bring the cost down for municipalities to preserve
services.”
[New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang, president of the
Massachusetts Mayors Association] said giving managers the ability
to design plans was an issue of “equity” and “parity” and bringing
benefits in line with those received by taxpayers. “In order to pay
for health care plans, you’re going to be laying off the very
employees that the unions represent,” he said.
State House News Service
Tuesday, March 8, 2010
Lawmakers inundated with input on muni-health reforms
Public employee unions in Massachusetts, startled
by the raging national debate over benefits for government workers,
yesterday offered concessions that they said would deliver
significant savings to cash-strapped cities and towns while
preserving collective bargaining rights.
The union officials, gathered at a State House
press conference, said their members are under assault as governors
from Wisconsin to New Jersey have directed public attention and
anger on public employee benefits. They said their plan shows they
are willing to work with Governor Deval Patrick and the Legislature
to address rising costs. And their speeches mixed promises of
cooperation with defiant calls to defend collective bargaining
rights that, they said, “are, and should always be, sacrosanct.’’
“Like our counterparts in the Midwest, we are
willing to make sacrifices to protect jobs and vital local services,
including education and public safety,’’ said Paul Toner, president
of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. “But our members have
made it very clear that they want this message delivered: Leave our
collective bargaining alone!’’
The unions proposed giving municipal employees 45
days to bargain changes to their health plans this spring. If they
are unable to reach target goals for cost savings, an unnamed third
party would decide whether the employees would be required to join a
lower-cost state health insurance system, known as the Group
Insurance Commission, or accept changes imposed by local officials.
The agreement between the unions and the state
would last 3 years and deliver $120 million in health insurance
savings annually, union officials said. But, in the first year, $60
million of the savings would be given back to local public
employees, not to cities and towns. Union officials said the money
could help offset higher copayments and deductibles that local
workers would accept.
Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts
AFL-CIO, said public employees have accepted pay cuts and furloughs,
“and yet, we’re willing to go a little bit further to help our
Commonwealth.’’
“We want to be part of the solution,’’ he said,
standing with about 20 union leaders representing teachers,
firefighters, and other public workers.
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Unions offer concessions on health care
But hold firm on public-employee bargaining
The walls have been slowly closing in on
municipal employee unions when it comes to their outsized health
care benefits, with even labor-friendly Gov. Deval Patrick floating
a plan to rein in the runaway costs that are borne by local
taxpayers.
But public employee unions and their
fire-breathing leaders are accustomed to having their way with
elected Democrats on Beacon Hill. And so yesterday a coalition of
those unions took to the State House to release what they called a
compromise, but is more like a set of demands to govern any changes
to the way their members’ health benefits are designed....
The simple fact that the coalition is
acknowledging “difficult economic conditions” is, sad to say,
progress. But as lawmakers take testimony today on bills to overhaul
municipal health benefits they should consider not just the demands
of their union patrons but of their overburdened constituents.
A Boston Herald editorial
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
‘Compromise’ in name only
The proposal by public-employee unions in
Massachusetts to reduce health insurance costs for cities and towns
may be a good-faith gesture, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough.
Half measures can’t control soaring medical costs for public
employees, which threaten to degrade basic municipal services for
taxpayers across the state....
This proposal would be a step backwards at a time
when even Governor Patrick, a hold-out union supporter, is vowing to
make it easier for cities and towns to put workers into the state
plan without any bargaining at all; the union proposal would not
only guarantee further wrangling, but would give unions new clout to
block changes within the Group Insurance Commission and then deprive
cities and towns of half of the savings....
Not only do the health care benefits of public
workers outstrip those of private-sector workers, but the same
private employees are losing out when municipal managers are forced
to cut back on basic police, fire, and library service to pay for
bloated benefits....
The unions’ willingness to accept contract
changes is a welcome first step. But many more are needed to help
cities and towns emerge from the fiscal morass.
A Boston Globe editorial
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Unions’ plan on health costs offers way too little, too late
Binding arbitration and money grabs are part of
what put Bay State cities and towns in their current financial fix,
which makes the health insurance "compromise" proposed by the public
employee unions Monday almost worse than no solution at all....
Unlike what's been happening in some Midwestern
states, the collective bargaining rights of public employees here in
the Bay State remain secure for now. But patience may be wearing
thin with a Democratic leadership on Beacon Hill that appears to
take its marching orders from the unions....
It's time for legislators to bite the bullet and,
with or without union approval, provide municipalities — and their
taxpayers — with genuine relief in the next fiscal year.
A Salem News editorial
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Unions' plan won't fix anything
When it comes to restraining municipal health
care costs, the train is leaving the station. This week, organized
labor came to the State House — and tried to clamber aboard the
caboose.
“We are here in the spirit of cooperation,’’
proclaimed Robert Haynes, president of the AFL-CIO, in announcing
labor’s plan on Monday. “We are here genuinely seeking compromise on
the issue of health care. We understand times are tough, and we are
willing to sacrifice even more and be an even bigger part of the
solution in these tough times.’’
It’s hard to think that Haynes himself believes
that. This plan is so silly it doesn’t even merit respectful
consideration....
“It’s been said many, many times . . . that these
unions have given up lots in their collective bargaining in order to
get to negotiating health care,’’ Haynes replied when I posed that
query to him.
Hmm. It’s been said many, many times that Elvis
is alive, too. But where’s the evidence? I have yet to see any
credible study or information that suggests Massachusetts municipal
workers are underpaid relative to their private-sector
counterparts....
Further, the average hourly wage of public sector
union workers is more than $5 an hour higher than that of
private-sector union members.
In short, this “compromise’’ is so self-serving
it can’t even be considered a plodding, broken-down old gift horse.
Rather, it’s a Trojan horse — and the Legislature
needs to beware.
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Labor’s health care trick
By Scot Lehigh
Across the world, from Tripoli to Madison, the
hackerama is in full retreat. The tax-fattened parasite classes,
from Gaddafi to the greed-crazed teachers of Wisconsin, are on the
run.
Except in Massachusetts.
If the United States were the Arab world, we’d be
Syria, an island of tranquility, the people long since bullied into
silence by a violence-prone minority sect determined to protect and
preserve ... their lavish layabout lifestyles. The working people of
Syria are oppressed by Alawites, we in Massachusetts are vexed by
payroll patriots.
If these union hacks lived in Somalia, they’d be
pirates....
New Jersey, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma
. . . the insurrection spreads, except here. As John Walsh, the
chairman of the ruling oligarchy, put it of his shiftless legions of
hacks growing rich on the public payroll: “We have a governor who
has worked hard to make them part of the solution.”
Yeah, kind of like the African mercenaries are
part of the solution in Libya.
The Boston Herald
Friday, February 25, 2011
Bay State immune to insurrection against hackerama
By Howie Carr
One of the most remarkable things about the
standoff in Wisconsin is that it has reignited a debate rarely heard
for the last half-century: Are public-employee unions in the public
interest?
Interestingly, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a
Democratic icon and strong champion of the labor movement,
emphatically thought not.
A shrewd tactician who loved his country, FDR
recognized that public-employee unions are a different breed.
"All government employees should realize that the
process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be
transplanted into the public service," he declared.
In the private sector, management has a strong
incentive to negotiate pragmatically — the need to maintain a profit
to stay in business. Customers have a choice of buying cheaper
products and services elsewhere.
In the public sector, such restraints disappear.
The employees — through their campaign contributions and organizing
activities — often get to determine who sits on the other side of
the negotiating table from them.
When politicians who owe their power to public
employees conduct so-called negotiations with them, taxpayers are
left utterly defenseless. Since government is a monopoly, citizens
are not permitted to shop around for another one that negotiates
better contracts and provides cheaper services. No, citizens must
simply pay, under the threat of arrest and imprisonment.
Thus, politicians can give away the store, bank
on the unions’ support in the next election, and hand the bill over
to someone else.
You.
Until Democrats reorient their party away from
these interests, they will not be inclined to stand up to them.
Indeed, they will help public employees wage war against taxpayers
who are pleading for reform and relief, even if that war takes the
form of personal attacks, intimidation and violent rhetoric. As Rep.
Michael Capuano, D-Cambridge, told cheering public employees at a
recent rally: "Every once in awhile you need to get out on the
streets and get a little bloody when necessary." (He later a
apologized for the remark.)
The Providence Journal
Tuesday, March 1, 2010
Private unions and public ones
By Edward Achorn
The only time people in Massachusetts care about
what’s happening in Wisconsin is when Tom Brady’s playing on Lambeau
Field. So why did hundreds of Bay State government workers show up
to protest Wisconsin’s governor at Beacon Hill yesterday?
One word: Money. Your money.
The battle over government employees and
collective bargaining endangers the entire foundation of
Massachusetts politics: Unions use their members’ cash and labor to
elect and protect pro-union hacks who then vote to give more money
and power to unions. Eisenhower might have called it the
“Union-Political Complex.” ...
Private unions don’t elect their bosses. Public
unions do. They elect the selectmen, councilmen and reps who
negotiate “against” them on pay and benefits.
Imagine a divorce settlement in which your
attorney is also your soon-to-be ex, and you’ve got a good idea of
how this works.
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Taxpayers, go on offense
By Michael Graham
Government workers have taken to the streets in
Madison, Wis., to battle a series of reforms proposed by Gov. Scott
Walker that include allowing workers to opt out of paying dues to
unions. Everywhere that this "opt out" idea has been proposed,
unions have battled it vigorously because the money they collect
from dues is at the heart of their power.
Unions use that money not only to run their daily
operations but to wage political campaigns in state capitals and
city halls. Indeed, public-sector unions especially have become the
nation's most aggressive advocates for higher taxes and spending.
They sponsor tax-raising ballot initiatives and pay for advertising
and lobbying campaigns to pressure politicians into voting for them.
And they mount multimillion dollar campaigns to defeat efforts by
governors and taxpayer groups to roll back taxes.
The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The Showdown Over Public Union Power
At last, politicians and voters are fighting back against the most
potent lobby
for government spending and ever-higher taxes.
By Steven Malanga
Key members of the Blue Cross Blue Shield board
that gave the nod to then-CEO Cleve Killingsworth’s controversial
$11 million severance have been public advocates for trimming
soaring health-care costs — even as they sat on a panel that quietly
approved the departing chief’s golden parachute.
Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce President Paul
Guzzi has crusaded to lower health-care costs in his day job
representing the interests of local businesses, many of which
struggle under the burden of rising premiums for their employee
health plans.
“Advancing payment reform to bring health-care
costs under control” is one of the Greater Boston Chamber of
Commerce’s top policy agenda items, Guzzi said in a statement in
January. Guzzi made $84,463 as the Blue Cross board chairman at the
time of the Killingsworth vote.
Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts
AFL-CIO who made $72,700 as a Blue Cross board member in 2010, has
championed health-care cost reduction for the thousands of union
members he represents.
“Unions stand ready to be part of the solution to
the health-care cost crisis in which we all find ourselves,” Haynes
said in an AFL-CIO statement in January. “The only way to ensure we
are part of the solution is to guarantee that we have a voice and
meaningful role in how cost savings are achieved.”
The Boston Herald
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Trio publicly crusaded against rising health costs
Behind the $hield
I didn’t think he had it in him. But AFL-CIO
President Robert Haynes, no spring chicken, practically broke the
land-speed record as he tried to dash away from a pack of reporters
yesterday on Beacon Hill.
He’d just finished a press conference about
reducing “working families’ ” health-care cost problems.
Unfortunately for Haynes, he’s now part of that
problem.
No doubt the hypocrisy has occurred to him. You
know: talking the talk, not walking the walk.
Or trotting the trot, as he attempted to do
yesterday before being cornered by lights, cameras and tape
recorders.
That’s when he said he would not be giving up his
$72,700 salary for sitting on the board of nonprofit Blue Cross —
the company that’s doubled premiums on thousands of “working
families” earning nowhere near $72,700....
I tried to find out yesterday how much Haynes
makes from the AFL-CIO and whether, as a Blue Cross board member, he
gets insurance through Blue Cross at an 80 percent reduced rate. His
AFL-CIO spokesman couldn’t answer either question.
But this much I know. Haynes lambastes those who
make reasonable attempts to rein in unreasonable union demands on
behalf of all “working families,” not just union families. He
lambastes CEO excesses, too. But then, Haynes may have quietly voted
for Killingsworth’s whopper of an excess anyway.
I guess I’d be dashing for cover, too. You just
can’t claim to stand with “working families” while doing
management’s dirty work.
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Union chief ‘working’ both sides of the street
By Margery Eagan
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Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Just about everyone across the country has
finally come around to recognize how much the public employee unions
have pillaged the taxpayers -- in collusion with their politically
powered protectors. The game of self-interest back-rubbing has been
revealed, stripped naked for the world to see. In a case of
too little too late, the public employee unions are scrambling to
keep their stranglehold on our wallets by any means possible, using
any means available, until -- they hope -- it blows over.
Except this crisis is not going to blow over.
Not this time. Nobody is going to be able to forget about it.
It will be in our faces more and more as the cost of the political
promises to public employee unions come due. It has come due
now, and will only get worse in the day, months, and years ahead.
Since common sense arose in Wisconsin and its
newly-elected Gov. Scott Walker launched his effort to abolish
collective bargaining for public unions before his state goes
belly-up, these unions across the nation are seeing the writing on
the wall. The taxpaying public on a large scale has awoken to
the rip-off the unions and the politicians in their pockets have
perpetrated -- and it is angry, getting angrier by the day.
"Concessions" is the unions' new-found catch
word. But these "concessions" are just a way to buy time.
While it may sound good when said fast, little is given back to
the taxpayers while the union proposals are filled with additional
though subtle power grabs.
In Wisconsin, the public employee unions offered
concessions in the amount their members will contribute to their
health insurance and pensions -- but this only when Gov. Walker
announced his intent to end all collective bargaining period.
Here in Massachusetts -- with its dominant
Democrat power structure, beholding to the unions -- "concessions"
amount to the municipal unions accepting the same health insurance
plan as state public employees. The cost savings -- that
should stay with us taxpayers, their employers, and our communities
-- will be split with union members, if they have their way!
And the unions would gain more control over the state's health
insurance plan forevermore.
This public employee unions' "concession" should
be laughed off of Beacon Hill.
Just as the head union honco, Robert J. Haynes,
president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, should be laughed out of his
union position by the rank-and file. While he's been allegedly
representing "working families" (by rapaciously picking the pockets
of all the other working families, we the taxpayers) at no doubt a
salary his members can only dream about, he's also been collecting
an additional $72,700 annually as a member of the board of Blue
Cross Blue Shield, doling out multi-million dollar golden parachutes
to crony fat-cat executives.
Haynes isn't alone at the "non-profit" trough.
There's another longtime advocate for higher taxes on "working
families" who represents an organization that is always aligned
against any tax relief ballot question --
Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce President Paul Guzzi ($84,463 as
BCBS board chairman).
That board of directors looks like the who's-who
of politically-connected "beautiful people." Need we wonder
why health insurance rates in Massachusetts are the highest in the
nation and still climbing?
Jon Keller interviewed Robert Haynes on his
Sunday morning public affairs program, Keller @ Large, this
past weekend. The unions' capo di tutti capo has one tired strategy
when being interviewed: Blah, blah, blah ad nausea until the
interview's over. You can catch this stumbling and bumbling
dolt's responses at the below links:
Keller @ Large
Union Chief and Board Member Discusses Blue Cross CEO’s Golden
Parachute
March 6, 2011
Jon Keller interviews Robert J. Haynes, president
of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO
PART 1 /
PART 2
CLT and its members have been aware of the
impending "Ticking
Time Bomb -- Public Employee Benefits" for over a decade, have
been sounding an alarm of the approaching train wreck since 2000. It
has fallen on deaf ear -- until now.
As usual, we've been right, for over a decade on
this issue.
The bad news is, that union gravy train is now
running off the tracks.
Something is finally going to be done --
only because it needs to get done; the end has been reached.
There is no time for "concessions" any more.
That's the old game, and the old game is over. Either Beacon Hill
gets it right -- as is being attempted in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio,
New Jersey, and elsewhere, including even Democrat-controlled New
York -- or cities and towns will begin going bankrupt.
Municipal bankruptcy may be the only solution in
the end, for bankruptcy will make all existing contracts null and
void -- and the unions will end up with nothing.
That might well be the only solution, if
taxpayers are to survive.
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Chip Ford |
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State House News Service
Tuesday, March 8, 2010
Lawmakers inundated with input on muni-health reforms
By Michael Norton, Matt Murphy and Kyle Cheney
A marathon hearing Tuesday on bills aimed at helping municipalities
reduce the crushing burden of health care costs illustrated
bipartisan support for the goal but a continuing divide over how to
achieve it and claims that the bills don’t address overall insurance
costs.
Sen. Kenneth Donnelly (D-Arlington), a former union official and
Lexington firefighter, told the committee he supports efforts to
provide municipalities with relief from rising health care costs,
but described the pending proposals as ones that would shift costs
from the healthy to the sick rather than reduce them.
“The claims will be the claims. You will still have the same costs.
It’s a matter of who pays,” Donnelly told members of the
Legislature’s Public Service Committee, co-chaired by Rep. John
Scibak (D-South Hadley) and Sen. Katherine Clark (D-Melrose),
winning a round of applause from union members on hand for the
hearing.
But committee members heard over and over that health insurance
costs are making other investments impossible.
Since 2000, the cost of employee health care has wiped out increases
in state aid from 1993 to 2000 that brought school districts up to
targeted funding levels, according to Linda Noonan, executive
director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. From
2000 to 2007, annual health care costs in school budgets grew by $1
billion, $300 more than the rise in Chapter 70 school aid, the chief
pot of state funding for local schools, she said.
Lt. Gov. Tim Murray, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, and mayors and
selectmen testified that pending bills could collectively save
cities and towns more than $100 million, with Murray touting a plan
to push eligible municipal retirees into Medicare as capable of
trimming $30 million from municipal budgets.
“Facing a cut to local aid and unavoidable, tough budget choices, we
need to promptly give them as many tools as possible to manager
through these difficult fiscal times, preserve critical local
services, and take the pressure off of property taxes,” Murray said.
Murray urged immediate action on the Medicare change, noting a March
31 annual deadline for applications. It may be too late though, as
several who testified warned time would be needed for “education”
and “transition” – Menino said switching to a new plan could be a
“traumatic experience” for some retirees.
Sen. Clark told the News Service late Tuesday that the committee was
still exploring whether to sever the Medicare piece from the bill
and advance it on its own. Asked if reforms could be approved in
time to help cities and towns save money in the fiscal year that
begins in just over three months, Clark said, “It’s certainly our
goal. Everybody wants this to be resolved.” Clark said groundwork
for the reforms had been laid in previous legislative sessions.
Gov. Patrick’s plan requires municipalities and union to expedite
collective bargaining to negotiate a new health plan equivalent in
cost to the care state employees receive through the Group Insurance
Commission. If an agreement is not reached within a limited period
to be specified by regulation, a municipality would be required to
join the Group Insurance Commission or implement a local plan
equivalent in cost to the state plan.
Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation President Michael Widmer said
reforms are necessary to preserve local government services and jobs
and noted the pending proposals don’t even attempt to address
billions of dollars in unfunded municipal retiree health care
liabilities. Widmer said taxpayers are footing the bill for “the
most generous health plans in the state” while seeing their own
health insurance benefits and local services erode and paying
increased property taxes “They are being hit four ways,” he said.
“This is an absolute unsustainable situation.”
Noting “a lot of people have asked the question,” Group Insurance
Commission Executive Director Delores Mitchell said her agency was
beginning work on an analysis examining the question of whether
municipal employees, which include police and firefighters, cost
more to insure than state employees.
Mitchell said the commission has learned how to bring cities and
towns into its plans under a state law that has attracted 25 to 30
communities. “We know how to orchestrate a smooth transition,”
Mitchell said. “We will do whatever it takes to make it work.” She
said she expected the commission would need more staff and funding.
Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll said health care and pension costs are
cannibalizing revenues eyed by proponents of municipal services and
said a “tremendous” amount of time is required to work on health
insurance issues with the unions. The reform bills, she said, will
maintain “very good health insurance” and help ensure that
differences are resolved. “I can’t stress enough the urgency
surrounding this issue,” she said.
Menino testified in favor of a bill allowing the City of Boston
create a health insurance panel modeled after the state commission
and other mayors called on lawmakers to let them set health plan
rules outside of collective bargaining while leaving premiums
subject to negotiations with worker unions.
Public employee unions announced Monday they are willing to agree to
expedited collective bargaining to help cities and towns protect
jobs and services by trimming health insurance costs, but they
argued that savings for cities and towns would translate into cost
increases for municipal employees and that those workers should be
allowed to split the savings.
At the hearing, union advocates invoked the continuing battle in
Wisconsin over collective bargaining, as well as the recent
revelation of an $11 million payout to former Blue Cross Blue Shield
head Cleve Killingsworth.
“If you gave me $11 million, I couldn’t spend it,” said Ken Scanzio.
“You’re talking about people that are making $40,000 a year.
Collective bargaining is what we live by. I’ve never come up and
seen so many pieces of legislation where they’re going to try to
take collective bargaining away from us. We’re not the villains here
… It’s very important that we remember that if you give us lousy
health care, it’s going to cost you in the end.”
“We are the men and the women of the commonwealth who are willing
without any thought or care or concern for our own safety to go into
the street to put our lives on the line to protect all of you and
all the citizens of the commonwealth, and all we want is a fair
shake,” said Ray McGrath, a lobbyist for the International
Brotherhood of Police and the National Association of Government
Employees. “We recently lost one of our brothers because he was
protecting his city. We are the people who are willing to give the
ultimate sacrifice.”
Rep. Paul Brodeur (D-Melrose) praised some municipal managers for
agreeing that any savings for cities and towns would simply be a
shift of costs onto local employees.
“By recognizing that what we’re talking about is a cost-shift as
opposed to a savings I think is very, very helpful,” he said. “There
is no savings to be generated. The same amount of dollars under most
of these proposals is what is going to be spent.”
Union members of the Public Employees' Municipal Health Coalition
said state regulations must be changed to allow for the creation of
savings accounts to mitigate expected increases in employee
co-payments and deductibles, called for a ban on midyear health
insurance plan design changes at the state level, and said lawmakers
should force increased labor representation on the state commission
that oversees health plans.
Mayors told lawmakers that health insurance costs are forcing
layoffs and leaving little or nothing for other services and claimed
they’re unable currently to adjust employee copayments and
deductibles.
New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang, president of the Massachusetts Mayors
Association, said the debate is less about “savings” than avoiding
costs. “We’re jumping from iceberg to iceberg regarding our costs
escalating,” he said.
Before the hearing, a group of mayors met with Gov. Patrick’s budget
chief, Administration and Finance Secretary Jay Gonzalez, to press
the importance of giving local managers more control over the design
of health care plans.
“Very shortly we're not going to have city halls. We’re going to
have city insurance companies because we’re not going to be able to
have services because of the cost health care to municipalities,”
said Menino.
Menino said he could not enlist city employees in the state plan
even if he wanted to because of union opposition.
Lang said the union proposal would do little to help cities and
towns. “They will not scratch the surface of the problem,” he said.
“We need to really be able to have the flexibility to bring the cost
down for municipalities to preserve services.”
Lang said giving managers the ability to design plans was an issue
of “equity” and “parity” and bringing benefits in line with those
received by taxpayers. “In order to pay for health care plans,
you’re going to be laying off the very employees that the unions
represent,” he said.
Scibak said he was not sure a “one size fits all” solution would
address the problem in communities statewide and said he found some
“reasonableness” in the 50-50 savings sharing model endorsed by
public employee unions.
Both Lang and Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone said plan design
would not simply shift costs onto employees. “It’s almost a case of
over-insurance. You’re paying, in essence, for more insurance than
you need in many cases,” Lang said. Curtatone said employees would
“share in the cost savings in their premium costs.”
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Unions offer concessions on health care
But hold firm on public-employee bargaining
By Michael Levenson
Public employee unions in Massachusetts, startled by the raging
national debate over benefits for government workers, yesterday
offered concessions that they said would deliver significant savings
to cash-strapped cities and towns while preserving collective
bargaining rights.
The union officials, gathered at a State House press conference,
said their members are under assault as governors from Wisconsin to
New Jersey have directed public attention and anger on public
employee benefits. They said their plan shows they are willing to
work with Governor Deval Patrick and the Legislature to address
rising costs. And their speeches mixed promises of cooperation with
defiant calls to defend collective bargaining rights that, they
said, “are, and should always be, sacrosanct.’’
“Like our counterparts in the Midwest, we are willing to make
sacrifices to protect jobs and vital local services, including
education and public safety,’’ said Paul Toner, president of the
Massachusetts Teachers Association. “But our members have made it
very clear that they want this message delivered: Leave our
collective bargaining alone!’’
The unions proposed giving municipal employees 45 days to bargain
changes to their health plans this spring. If they are unable to
reach target goals for cost savings, an unnamed third party would
decide whether the employees would be required to join a lower-cost
state health insurance system, known as the Group Insurance
Commission, or accept changes imposed by local officials.
The agreement between the unions and the state would last 3 years
and deliver $120 million in health insurance savings annually, union
officials said. But, in the first year, $60 million of the savings
would be given back to local public employees, not to cities and
towns. Union officials said the money could help offset higher
copayments and deductibles that local workers would accept.
Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, said
public employees have accepted pay cuts and furloughs, “and yet,
we’re willing to go a little bit further to help our Commonwealth.’’
“We want to be part of the solution,’’ he said, standing with about
20 union leaders representing teachers, firefighters, and other
public workers.
The unions floated the plan one day before a legislative hearing
today on Patrick’s proposal to cut public employee health costs. The
governor’s proposal, like the union’s, would require a brief
bargaining period before local workers would be forced to join the
state insurance system or accept changes from local leaders. But the
governor’s proposal would not give 50 percent of the savings to
public employees, deferring that decision to regulators at a later
date.
The governor is in Israel on a trade mission this week, but his
budget chief, Jay Gonzalez, issued a statement saying the
administration looks forward to working with unions to tackle the
high cost of health care.
“We appreciate the unions’ willingness to work with us in delivering
cost savings to cities and towns that will help preserve critical
services to residents across the Commonwealth,’’ Gonzalez said.
Local officials and taxpayer groups, however, dismissed the
proposal, saying it could drive up costs and increase labor’s power
to block insurance changes.
“Their proposal is a convoluted and cumbersome process, which fails
to achieve anything close to the savings that is necessary in order
to preserve the jobs of public employees,’’ said Michael J. Widmer,
president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a
business-backed budget watchdog group.
Local officials criticized the plan for giving a third party the
power to resolve union-management disputes, saying it amounted to
binding arbitration, which typically favors labor. They also
criticized a provision that would give unions 50 percent of the
seats on the board of the Group Insurance Commission.
“Overall, their framework is actually a repackaged collection of
steps that include no new proposals and, in the end, provide little
in the way of reform or taxpayer relief,’’ said Geoff Beckwith,
executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, which
represents local officials.
Mayor Scott W. Lang of New Bedford, who serves as president of the
Massachusetts Mayors Association, called the union proposal “a good
first step’’ but “not the answer, by any means.’’ He said cities and
towns — not public employees — must keep the savings from health
care changes, to prevent layoffs.
“Everybody better get out of the old industrial model soon,
otherwise we won’t have any employees to even enjoy health
insurance,’’ he said.
City and town health costs have risen by 11 percent on average over
the last decade, far outpacing local revenues, which have risen by 4
percent on average during the period, according to the taxpayers’
foundation. Meanwhile, the state this summer is expected to cut
local aid for the fourth consecutive year, which could trigger
further layoffs of teachers, firefighters, and other municipal
workers.
Union officials sketched their proposal in a letter to the governor
yesterday, but have not written it into a bill or presented it
directly to Patrick or legislative leaders. The missing details
include what the benchmark for savings would be, and how the unnamed
third party would resolve standoffs.
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo said he was waiting to see details.
“I want to see real savings,’’ said DeLeo, who supports forcing
local workers into the state insurance system if local officials
can’t negotiate equivalent savings on their own. “I want to see
cities and towns be able to have the opportunity to make sure they
can provide adequate police, adequate fire, adequate teaching,
adequate DPW workers,’’ he said.
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
A Boston Herald editorial
‘Compromise’ in name only
The walls have been slowly closing in on municipal employee unions
when it comes to their outsized health care benefits, with even
labor-friendly Gov. Deval Patrick floating a plan to rein in the
runaway costs that are borne by local taxpayers.
But public employee unions and their fire-breathing leaders are
accustomed to having their way with elected Democrats on Beacon
Hill. And so yesterday a coalition of those unions took to the State
House to release what they called a compromise, but is more like a
set of demands to govern any changes to the way their members’
health benefits are designed.
A version of “plan design,” for example, which would give municipal
managers the flexibility to make health plan changes outside the
collective bargaining process (including the level of co-payments
and deductibles paid by employees) could be acceptable to the Public
Employees’ Municipal Health Coalition.
But only if no mid-year changes are allowed.
And only if the plan changes are “fairly negotiated and include a
final expedited resolution process.”
Kind of like collective bargaining followed by arbitration.
Sort of misses the point, right?
The coalition offered “general support” for Patrick’s proposal,
which sets a deadline for unions to strike cost-saving deals with
management, or face mandatory enrollment in the state group
insurance program. But there are enough strings attached to tie this
debate up for years. And naturally the unions want “some of the
savings” associated with reform poured back into employee benefits.
The simple fact that the coalition is acknowledging “difficult
economic conditions” is, sad to say, progress. But as lawmakers take
testimony today on bills to overhaul municipal health benefits they
should consider not just the demands of their union patrons but of
their overburdened constituents.
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
A Boston Globe editorial
Unions’ plan on health costs offers way too little, too late
The proposal by public-employee unions in Massachusetts to reduce
health insurance costs for cities and towns may be a good-faith
gesture, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Half measures can’t
control soaring medical costs for public employees, which threaten
to degrade basic municipal services for taxpayers across the state.
In a tacit acknowledgment that municipal health costs have become
unsustainable, leaders from education, public safety, and other
unions proposed Monday to give employees 45 days to bargain changes
to their health plans with city and town managers. If an agreement
can’t be reached, a third party would decide if the employees would
be required to join the lower-cost Group Insurance Commission for
state workers or accept changes proposed by managers. Estimated
savings of $120 million would be split evenly between the
municipalities and the public employees, according to the proposal.
The unions also want labor to have 50 percent of the seats on the
board of the Group Insurance Commission, which approves cost-saving
measures such as higher employee copayments and limited network
plans.
This proposal would be a step backwards at a time when even Governor
Patrick, a hold-out union supporter, is vowing to make it easier for
cities and towns to put workers into the state plan without any
bargaining at all; the union proposal would not only guarantee
further wrangling, but would give unions new clout to block changes
within the Group Insurance Commission and then deprive cities and
towns of half of the savings.
Municipalities are facing their fourth straight year of local aid
cuts from the state. Health insurance costs for cities and towns
have risen by 150 percent over the last decade compared with 30
percent for other municipal costs, according to the nonprofit
Massachusetts Municipal Association. Not only do the health care
benefits of public workers outstrip those of private-sector workers,
but the same private employees are losing out when municipal
managers are forced to cut back on basic police, fire, and library
service to pay for bloated benefits.
State workers receive generous health care benefits that largely
aren’t subject to collective bargaining or outside arbitration. And
when the state workers’ Group Insurance Commission finds ways to
reduce costs, all of the savings accrue to the state. That’s what
city managers and taxpayers are asking for at the local level. It’s
a reasonable request. Municipal workers deserve coverage that’s no
better or worse than their state counterparts enjoy.
The union proposal would make such savings more difficult. As
presently constituted, the Group Insurance Commission does an
excellent job of adjusting benefits to save costs without drastic
cuts. Adding more union representatives to the board would upset
that balance. Meanwhile, introducing binding arbitration into the
bargaining process would slow the pace of change. Arbitration awards
are often based on past practices and expectations; what’s needed
now is a fresh willingness to grapple with fiscal reality.
The unions’ willingness to accept contract changes is a welcome
first step. But many more are needed to help cities and towns emerge
from the fiscal morass.
The Salem News
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
A Salem News editorial
Unions' plan won't fix anything
Binding arbitration and money grabs are part of what put Bay State
cities and towns in their current financial fix, which makes the
health insurance "compromise" proposed by the public employee unions
Monday almost worse than no solution at all.
Yesterday, mayors, town managers, selectmen and other municipal
officials descended on Beacon Hill to advocate for the same
flexibility the state has to design the health insurance plans
offered its employees. They need relief and they need it now —
before the start of the next fiscal year July 1 and without any
requirement that they "share" the savings with their employees.
In fact, Andy Bagley of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation told
the commonwealth's mayors when they gathered in Salem last month,
"the notion that there are savings to share just doesn't make any
sense."
Indeed, the "plan design" authority advocated by municipal officials
won't produce a giant cache of money to be spent elsewhere, it will
simply slow the rate at which their health insurance costs have been
growing.
The Public Employees' Municipal Health Coalition's demands for
sharing in the "savings" produced by plan design, along with a
45-day negotiation period followed by third-party review if the
parties can't agree on a new plan, are tantamount to the
legislatively imposed veto that has stymied cost-saving efforts to
date.
"It's pretty much a repackaged framework from over the last couple
of years," Geoffrey Beckwith, executive director of the
Massachusetts Municipal Association, observed. "There really isn't
much in terms of lasting reform and taxpayer relief."
Unlike what's been happening in some Midwestern states, the
collective bargaining rights of public employees here in the Bay
State remain secure for now. But patience may be wearing thin with a
Democratic leadership on Beacon Hill that appears to take its
marching orders from the unions.
With health care costs consuming an ever-greater share of every city
and town budget, failure by the Legislature to enact real reform
will mean reductions in services and layoffs of teachers — as is now
being contemplated in Danvers — and other personnel.
It's time for legislators to bite the bullet and, with or without
union approval, provide municipalities — and their taxpayers — with
genuine relief in the next fiscal year.
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Labor’s health care trick
By Scot Lehigh
When it comes to restraining municipal health care costs, the train
is leaving the station. This week, organized labor came to the State
House — and tried to clamber aboard the caboose.
“We are here in the spirit of cooperation,’’ proclaimed Robert
Haynes, president of the AFL-CIO, in announcing labor’s plan on
Monday. “We are here genuinely seeking compromise on the issue of
health care. We understand times are tough, and we are willing to
sacrifice even more and be an even bigger part of the solution in
these tough times.’’
It’s hard to think that Haynes himself believes that. This plan is
so silly it doesn’t even merit respectful consideration.
Under labor’s proposal, if unions and municipal management couldn’t
agree to an unspecified and non-mandatory — and thus easily
sidestepped — “benchmark’’ for health care savings, some kind of
binding arbitration would decide the issue. (That idea should be an
immediate red flag, given the Menino administration’s experiences
with binding arbitration in disputes with both the firefighters and
the police union.) Half of any savings through possible plan design
changes or joining the state’s Group Insurance Commission would go
to union members, at least in year one.
In exchange for those (totally inadequate) provisions, labor
proposes limiting the GIC’s mid-year plan-changing flexibility — and
increasing labor’s representation on the commission to half (!) the
members.
“What that means is that you’d be taking collective bargaining to a
different venue,’’ Dolores Mitchell, the commission’s executive
director, noted in an interview.
Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation,
put it more bluntly: “So rather than giving cities and towns
plan-design authority, their reform is to give themselves a virtual
veto at the GIC.’’ That’s exactly right. Instead of solving a local
problem, labor’s plan would screw up the highly effective agency
that provides health insurance plans to state employees.
Why, given the history of unions blocking meaningful changes at the
local level, would anyone entertain increasing its clout at the GIC
at all? (Anyone other than the unions themselves, that is.) As
several mayors told a legislative hearing on local health care costs
yesterday, labor’s stubborn stance on plan changes means health care
costs are cannibalizing city services and forcing layoffs of other
employees. In Salem, annual increases in health care and pension
costs regularly outstrip new revenues, a dynamic that has forced at
least a dozen layoffs in the last couple of years, Mayor Kim
Driscoll told me.
“I’m the one who has to look that person in the eye who is being let
go not because he did a bad job or because we don’t value his
service, or need it, but because his colleagues wanted to keep a $5
copay,’’ she said.
Here’s the real question. Why should local unions be able to
negotiate health plan details at all? After all, state employees
can’t. Nor can most federal employees.
“It’s been said many, many times . . . that these unions have given
up lots in their collective bargaining in order to get to
negotiating health care,’’ Haynes replied when I posed that query to
him.
Hmm. It’s been said many, many times that Elvis is alive, too. But
where’s the evidence? I have yet to see any credible study or
information that suggests Massachusetts municipal workers are
underpaid relative to their private-sector counterparts.
Although unions assert that that’s true with public workers overall,
Bureau of Labor Statistics data for the Boston-Manchester, N.H.,
area certainly doesn’t backstop the notion. State and local workers
earn more in six of 11 job categories. Further, the average hourly
wage of public sector union workers is more than $5 an hour higher
than that of private-sector union members.
In short, this “compromise’’ is so self-serving it can’t even be
considered a plodding, broken-down old gift horse.
Rather, it’s a Trojan horse — and the Legislature needs to beware.
The Boston Herald
Friday, February 25, 2011
Bay State immune to insurrection against hackerama
By Howie Carr
Across the world, from Tripoli to Madison, the hackerama is in full
retreat. The tax-fattened parasite classes, from Gaddafi to the
greed-crazed teachers of Wisconsin, are on the run.
Except in Massachusetts.
If the United States were the Arab world, we’d be Syria, an island
of tranquility, the people long since bullied into silence by a
violence-prone minority sect determined to protect and preserve ...
their lavish layabout lifestyles. The working people of Syria are
oppressed by Alawites, we in Massachusetts are vexed by payroll
patriots.
If these union hacks lived in Somalia, they’d be pirates.
Look at what’s happened here just this week. Two prominent Democrats
were thrown into prison — one for helping her fugitive brother file
false tax returns, the other, an avowed socialist, for molesting
women — immigrant women, at that. The pair got a total of four
months — they’ll both be out long before Memorial Day.
And a congressman, Mike Capuano, the tough street kid from Dartmouth
College, goes ballistic on a handful of pro-democracy demonstrators
on the Common and starts invoking deranged images of violence, of
“blood in the streets.”
He’s just lucky the drunken savages egging him on didn’t seriously
hurt anybody. After all, four-on-one is pinky-ring fun. It’s how
they celebrate diversity.
What would Gabby Giffords think? Is it too late to add this puny
purveyor of hate speech to the President’s Commission on Civility?
Meanwhile, life goes on in the kleptocracy. A new president of UMass
is appointed — $550,000 a year including “deferred compensation.”
I’m sure he’ll get along great with the once and future UMass-Boston
vice chancellor for governmental relations and public affairs. That
would be Arthur Bernard, gone from hackademia for three years to
“work” at the State House, and now back again, for a mere $175,000.
And no one says boo.
New Jersey, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma . . . the
insurrection spreads, except here. As John Walsh, the chairman of
the ruling oligarchy, put it of his shiftless legions of hacks
growing rich on the public payroll: “We have a governor who has
worked hard to make them part of the solution.”
Yeah, kind of like the African mercenaries are part of the solution
in Libya.
Will there be more moonbat hate speech on the Common this weekend? A
word to you Bud Light-swigging union brothers fighting to keep your
phony-baloney six-figure jobs and your fake disability pensions: If
you decide to wade into an outnumbered crowd of pro-democracy
demonstrators wielding your traditional lead pipes and rubber hoses,
just remember to get the chant right this time:
Allah Hack-bar! Allah Hack-Bar!
The Providence Journal
Tuesday, March 1, 2010
Private unions and public ones
By Edward Achorn
One of the most remarkable things about the standoff in Wisconsin is
that it has reignited a debate rarely heard for the last
half-century: Are public-employee unions in the public interest?
Interestingly, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democratic icon
and strong champion of the labor movement, emphatically thought not.
A shrewd tactician who loved his country, FDR recognized that
public-employee unions are a different breed.
“All government employees should realize that the process of
collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted
into the public service,” he declared.
In the private sector, management has a strong incentive to
negotiate pragmatically — the need to maintain a profit to stay in
business. Customers have a choice of buying cheaper products and
services elsewhere.
In the public sector, such restraints disappear. The employees —
through their campaign contributions and organizing activities —
often get to determine who sits on the other side of the negotiating
table from them.
When politicians who owe their power to public employees conduct
so-called negotiations with them, taxpayers are left utterly
defenseless. Since government is a monopoly, citizens are not
permitted to shop around for another one that negotiates better
contracts and provides cheaper services. No, citizens must simply
pay, under the threat of arrest and imprisonment.
Thus, politicians can give away the store, bank on the unions’
support in the next election, and hand the bill over to someone
else.
You.
We’ve seen the results of such one-sided “negotiations”: early
retirements, pensions with annual cost-of-living boosts, free health
care for life. And while the politicians retain their power, and
public-employee-union bosses get fat, private-sector workers find
their quality of life steadily eroded by higher taxes that do little
to provide basic services or help the neediest.
It’s a perfect circle: Public-employee unions get increasing amounts
of money from the taxpayers, and use it to defeat the taxpayers’
interests.
Well, not perfect. The problem is that the victims eventually run
out of money.
In state after state, responsible leaders from both parties are
pointing out that these giveaways are unsustainable.
In Democratic Wisconsin last November, voters tried to shift gears,
electing a Republican governor and legislators who promised to rein
in the unions and their demands. This has led to massive protests by
the losers. All 14 of the state’s Democratic senators fled the state
to deny their chamber a quorum, thus blocking the majority from
enacting the people’s will.
Similar clashes are erupting in Indiana and Ohio.
It’s no wonder. Vast amounts of money and political power are at
stake, and politicians can hardly abandon the special interests that
provide them crucial dollars needed to win elections.
According to OpenSecrets.org, 13 of the top 21 “all-time donors” to
elections between 1998 and 2010 were unions, and on average, they
gave well over 90 percent of their donations to Democrats. This is
big-time money, and it buys politicians.
Until Democrats reorient their party away from these interests, they
will not be inclined to stand up to them. Indeed, they will help
public employees wage war against taxpayers who are pleading for
reform and relief, even if that war takes the form of personal
attacks, intimidation and violent rhetoric. As U.S. Rep. Michael
Capuano (D.-Mass.) told cheering public employees at a rally last
week: “Every once in awhile you need to get out on the streets and
get a little bloody when necessary.”
Still, everyone has slammed into a wall of reality — massive debts
at the federal, state and local level; high unemployment; strapped
taxpayers; gold-plated benefits for the government class that the
private sector can’t imaginably afford. This won’t go away. The
protests and efforts to quash representative democracy will only
increase, and spread throughout the country. Something has to give.
Let’s hope it is not freedom and the rule of law.
FDR understood the end game. “I want to emphasize my conviction that
militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization
of government employees,” he stated.
He argued that the expressed will of the people, through elections,
provides government employees the protections they need over time.
“The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws
enacted by their representatives in Congress,” FDR observed. The
same is true in state legislatures.
Whatever happens next in Wisconsin, the financial nightmare
confronting government at all levels promises that we’re going to be
hearing more of this debate in the months and years to come.
Edward Achorn is The Journal’s deputy editorial-pages editor.
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Taxpayers, go on offense
By Michael Graham
The only time people in Massachusetts care about what’s happening in
Wisconsin is when Tom Brady’s playing on Lambeau Field. So why did
hundreds of Bay State government workers show up to protest
Wisconsin’s governor at Beacon Hill yesterday?
One word: Money. Your money.
The battle over government employees and collective bargaining
endangers the entire foundation of Massachusetts politics: Unions
use their members’ cash and labor to elect and protect pro-union
hacks who then vote to give more money and power to unions.
Eisenhower might have called it the “Union-Political Complex.”
Its raw political power is the reason even FDR opposed unionization
of government workers.
A guy who could work with Joe Stalin didn’t want to work with Joe
the Unionized School Employee.
The reason is obvious. Private unions don’t elect their bosses.
Public unions do. They elect the selectmen, councilmen and reps who
negotiate “against” them on pay and benefits.
Imagine a divorce settlement in which your attorney is also your
soon-to-be ex, and you’ve got a good idea of how this works.
As Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute reports, unions like
the National Education Association and AFSCME are among the nation’s
top 10 biggest political donors. And unlike big givers in the
private sector who play both sides, 95 percent of government
workers’ donations has gone to Democrats who are far more likely to
raise taxes and boost spending, Malanga notes.
We’ve seen it in Massachusetts under Gov. Deval Patrick, even as
private sector unemployment has risen and average citizens have seen
their wages fall. And the divide is growing.
Most private-sector workers don’t get health care from their
employers after they retire, for example, but government workers get
their “employers” — we taxpayers — to cover a lifetime of health
care: 85 percent of the premiums for those who retired recently, and
90 percent if they retired pre-1995.
Then there are those generous pensions, which Massachusetts
government workers insist they pay for themselves. Wrong. They pay,
at best, 85 percent and the rest is picked up by taxpayers who work
two jobs, have no pensions and — unlike government workers — can
actually be fired if they’re lousy at their jobs.
There are no $100,000-a-year garage attendants — excuse me, “parking
utility technicians” — in the private sector. Only at Massport. And
the Pew Center for the States reports that Massachusetts has a $22
billion unfunded pension liability — one of the nation’s worst.
Meanwhile, public workers continue to retire in their 50s, (in 2005,
the average age of a retiring state worker was 58), get nearly all
of their health care paid for by taxpayers, and get a guaranteed
pension ranging from 60 percent to 80 percent of their salary.
And when we pensionless paycheck-to-paycheck taxpayers try to do
something about it, the unions call us “Hitler” and spend millions
electing pliant pols.
If the taxpayers win in Wisconsin, that could change. So forget the
Pats. From Beacon Hill to City Hall hacks, they are all Cheeseheads
now.
Michael Graham hosts a talk show on 96.9 WTKK.
The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The Showdown Over Public Union Power
At last, politicians and voters are fighting back against the most
potent lobby
for government spending and ever-higher taxes.
By Steven Malanga
Government workers have taken to the streets in Madison, Wis., to
battle a series of reforms proposed by Gov. Scott Walker that
include allowing workers to opt out of paying dues to unions.
Everywhere that this "opt out" idea has been proposed, unions have
battled it vigorously because the money they collect from dues is at
the heart of their power.
Unions use that money not only to run their daily operations but to
wage political campaigns in state capitals and city halls. Indeed,
public-sector unions especially have become the nation's most
aggressive advocates for higher taxes and spending. They sponsor
tax-raising ballot initiatives and pay for advertising and lobbying
campaigns to pressure politicians into voting for them. And they
mount multimillion dollar campaigns to defeat efforts by governors
and taxpayer groups to roll back taxes.
Early last year, for example, Oregon's unions spearheaded a
successful battle to pass ballot measures 66 and 67, which
collectively raised business and income taxes in the state by an
estimated $727 million annually. Led by $2 million from the Oregon
Education Association and $1.8 million from the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU), unions contributed an estimated 75% of
the nearly $7 million raised to promote the tax increases, according
to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
Also in 2010, teachers unions and public-safety unions in Arizona
were influential players in the successful ballot campaign to
increase the state's sales tax to 6.6% from 5.6% to raise an
additional $1 billion. Some state business groups also supported the
tax increase in the vain hope that the legislature would roll back
business and investment taxes. The public unions, by contrast,
wanted the tax hike precisely to avoid government spending cuts.
In Washington state there was a ballot measure last November that
would have raised $2 billion by imposing an income tax on those
earning more than $200,000. The media portrayed the political fight
as a battle among the rich. That's because William H. Gates Sr,
father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, supported the tax, while
Microsoft's current chief executive, Steve Ballmer and Amazon.com
founder Jeff Bezos opposed it.
But unions were the real power behind the scenes. According to
Ballotpedia.com, state and national SEIU locals gave $2.5 million,
while the National Education Association and Washington teachers
union locals contributed $900,000 to the $6 million campaign for the
new income tax. In the end, Washingtonians voted down the tax, in
part because they feared it would eventually be expanded to
everyone.
This was not the first time that government unions targeted
upper-income earners. In 2004, California labor groups—including the
California Teachers Association, the SEIU, and health interests such
as the California Council of Community Health Agencies—led a
successful $4.7 million campaign to raise the state income tax on
those making more than $1 million and devote the money to
health-care funding. In all, public unions gave $1 million to the
Proposition 63 effort, while public health groups donated another
$1.3 million, according to HealthVote.org.
In New York in 2008-09, then-Gov. David Paterson balked at tax
increases and proposed budget cuts in an attempt to come to grips
with the state's growing fiscal crisis. In response, unions launched
a barrage of attack ads. The New York State United Teachers union
spent $750,000 advocating against a cap on property taxes. The
state's health-care unions (and hospitals) mounted a $1 million
radio campaign against Medicaid cuts. In the end, the legislature
raised a host of taxes, including higher levies on the incomes of
those earning more than $200,000.
Across the Hudson, New Jersey's powerful teachers union has led the
fight against Gov. Chris Christie's efforts to cut spending. The New
Jersey Education Association collects about $100 million a year in
dues from its 203,000 members; last spring the union spent $300,000
a week, according to the head of the union, for radio ads urging tax
increases on the rich instead of budget cuts. But Mr. Christie held
firm and his budget was passed largely as he proposed it.
Public unions are also among the biggest players in national
politics. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (Afscme)
has been the third-biggest contributor to federal campaigns over the
past 20 years, having given $43 million. The National Education
Association is number eight with $31 million in contributions, while
the SEIU—half of whose 2.2 million members are government workers—is
No. 10, with $29 million in campaign donations.
Unlike businesses and industry groups that are also big givers but
tend to split their donations between the parties, some 95% of
government workers' donations has gone to the Democratic Party,
whose members are far more likely to favor raising taxes and
boosting spending than are members of the Republican Party.
The union strategy is finally beginning to encounter pushback. Last
year, supporters of Gov. Christie, anticipating a union onslaught,
set up a group called Reform Jersey Now to back the newly elected
governor with a public relations campaign in his first budget
battle. The group spent about $624,000, with contributions from
business PACs, including those representing the state's construction
industry, and from money donated by the Republican Governors
Association.
And in New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has urged business
groups to counter union efforts to defeat his budget, which cuts
spending by $3.7 billion. In response, a group that calls itself the
Committee to Save New York, financed by business groups and
executives, has launched a $10 million advertising campaign in
support of Gov. Cuomo's planned spending cuts for Medicaid and
education, as well as his efforts to cut the cost of state workers'
pensions.
If Gov. Walker succeeds in Wisconsin, it's likely that other
reformers will follow his lead and explore ways to restrict
public-sector unions' use of members' dues. Tax advocates in
California, for instance, have proposed an initiative that would
require a government union to gain the approval of individual
members in order to divert dues into political campaigns. Such
measures would give opponents around the country a new playbook to
follow in countering the rich resources and deep influence of public
unions over taxes and spending.
Mr. Malanga is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the
author of "Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy Against the American
Taxpayer" (Ivan R. Dee, 2010).
The Boston Herald
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Trio publicly crusaded against rising health costs
Behind the $hield
By Christine McConville and Hillary Chabot
Key members of the Blue Cross Blue Shield board that gave the nod to
then-CEO Cleve Killingsworth’s controversial $11 million severance
have been public advocates for trimming soaring health-care costs —
even as they sat on a panel that quietly approved the departing
chief’s golden parachute.
Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce President Paul Guzzi has crusaded
to lower health-care costs in his day job representing the interests
of local businesses, many of which struggle under the burden of
rising premiums for their employee health plans.
“Advancing payment reform to bring health-care costs under control”
is one of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s top policy agenda
items, Guzzi said in a statement in January. Guzzi made $84,463 as
the Blue Cross board chairman at the time of the Killingsworth vote.
Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO who made
$72,700 as a Blue Cross board member in 2010, has championed
health-care cost reduction for the thousands of union members he
represents.
“Unions stand ready to be part of the solution to the health-care
cost crisis in which we all find ourselves,” Haynes said in an
AFL-CIO statement in January. “The only way to ensure we are part of
the solution is to guarantee that we have a voice and meaningful
role in how cost savings are achieved.”
Bentley University president Gloria Larson, who earned $76,400 as a
Blue Cross board member last year, helped organize a confab of
business, labor and political leaders in Ashland in January that
addressed rising health-care costs. Those who planned to attend
reportedly included two other Blue Cross board members — Haynes and
former Suffolk District Attorney Ralph C. Martin II.
Yesterday, the votes of those and the other members of the Blue
Cross Blue Shield board were a mystery, as the nonprofit refused to
release the actual votes or attendance at the March 2010 meeting
where Killingsworth’s farewell kiss got the nod. A Blue Cross
spokesman said board members would not comment individually.
Attorney General Martha Coakley told the Herald yesterday that she
will launch an investigation of the Killingsworth payout.
Blue Cross has said it was obliged to pay out on a contractual
agreement when Killingsworth resigned after the company posted $149
million in losses.
The 18 members of the board — none of whom returned calls from the
Herald — are handsomely compensated, receiving pay ranging between
$56,000 and $90,000 for attending just 26 meetings a year.
Those salaries are an outrage as Bay State residents grapple with
their own sky-high medical bills, said Sen. Mark Montigny (D-New
Bedford).
“It’s symbolic and it feeds into why the public is angry about the
cost of health care,” Montigny said. “Most people would be shocked
to hear that these directors are making what is for many people a
year’s salary.”
Montigny added he believes board members shouldn’t be getting paid
at all.
“I think it’s pretty extraordinary to have payment on a nonprofit
board,” he said. “Usually people are clamoring to get on those
boards because it’s a public good, and it’s prestigious.”
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Union chief ‘working’ both sides of the street
By Margery Eagan
I didn’t think he had it in him. But AFL-CIO President Robert
Haynes, no spring chicken, practically broke the land-speed record
as he tried to dash away from a pack of reporters yesterday on
Beacon Hill.
He’d just finished a press conference about reducing “working
families’ ” health-care cost problems.
Unfortunately for Haynes, he’s now part of that problem.
No doubt the hypocrisy has occurred to him. You know: talking the
talk, not walking the walk.
Or trotting the trot, as he attempted to do yesterday before being
cornered by lights, cameras and tape recorders.
That’s when he said he would not be giving up his $72,700 salary for
sitting on the board of nonprofit Blue Cross — the company that’s
doubled premiums on thousands of “working families” earning nowhere
near $72,700.
He said the money the board of directors make is not really a big
deal. “It’s about $1 million that board members get paid, with $13
billion in (Blue Cross) revenue it’s like pennies a year.”
Pennies a year?
To “working families?”
Really?
He said he was “uncomfortable with huge payouts” like the $11
million golden parachute his board awarded to the forced-out
ex-chief of Blue Cross, Cleve Killingsworth.
Asked if he voted for the $11 million anyway, Haynes made another
impressive dash, this time across the hall to an elevator. As
reporters shouted more questions, he escaped behind its closed
doors.
He wouldn’t answer. I’m suspicious. So was he uncomfortable enough
to stand up against the $11 million on behalf of his struggling
“working families,” or not?
I tried to find out yesterday how much Haynes makes from the AFL-CIO
and whether, as a Blue Cross board member, he gets insurance through
Blue Cross at an 80 percent reduced rate. His AFL-CIO spokesman
couldn’t answer either question.
But this much I know. Haynes lambastes those who make reasonable
attempts to rein in unreasonable union demands on behalf of all
“working families,” not just union families. He lambastes CEO
excesses, too. But then, Haynes may have quietly voted for
Killingsworth’s whopper of an excess anyway.
I guess I’d be dashing for cover, too. You just can’t claim to stand
with “working families” while doing management’s dirty work.
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