Reader P sent me this link:
House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly last night to strip police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees of most of their rights to bargain over health care, saying the change would save millions of dollars for financially strapped cities and towns.[…]
“It’s pretty stunning,’’ said Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. “These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected. The same Democrats who we contributed to in their campaigns. The same Democrats who tell us over and over again that they’re with us, that they believe in collective bargaining, that they believe in unions… . It’s a done deal for our relationship with the people inside that chamber.’’
ED has also posted about this. Maybe some of you know why this happened, but it seems like a strange development in a blue state.
fasteddie9318
It’s only strange if you imagine that the Democratic Party is controlled by people who aren’t stupid and who actually do care about union workers.
Paul in KY
It seems an elected ‘leftist’ is always trying to tack Right. No matter what the state.
Downpuppy
It’s actually about getting local employees into the state health plan, and not nearly as bad as it sounds. Cities are just getting reamed on health care.
More detail – http://www.thesomervillenews.com/archives/14723#more-14723
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
It’s like we’ve fucking lost the argument on this in every single state legislature, even the ones with majority Dems.
jwb
@Downpuppy: The Dems better damned well get out in front on this and bring the unions on board, because otherwise this is a political disaster no matter how much it makes sense in the abstract.
Dave
@Downpuppy: Yeah. I wish they had negotiated this more with the unions, but this isn’t anywhere near the level of Walker/Snyder. It’s misguided to be sure, though.
PeakVT
Maybe Mass has run up against the limits of Romneycare’s ability to control costs and the state is hoping municipalities dump public workers into a state-run pool. Dunno. The linked article doesn’t have much reporting beyond the public statements of people involved.
ETA: Downpuppy BMTI.
Raenelle
It all makes perfect sense (even predictable) if you assume Marx was right.
Since World War II, consistently, under Democrats then Republicans, this country has supported dictatorships that suppressed unions and depressed wages and fought government that attempted some feeble redistribution of wealth to workers and farmers. This has been our very consistent policy.
The idiots who read Jonah Goldberg may think communists and fascists are the same thing, but our government can sure tell them apart. They’ve supported the fascists and subverted the communists (and even the socialists) with the consistency of the sun setting in the west.
Arrik
Wow. Just, wow.
People can try to minimize this, but the optics are terrible, and completely undercut efforts to derail the dangerous union-busting going on in the midwest.
NobodySpecial
Gee, a politician who had to flip to the D side on gay marriage in time for a vote who is described as ‘pro-life’ and ‘more conservative than his predecessor’ on Wikipedia hating on unions? Color me shocked.
Dave
Here’s another story about what this is all about. Basically, it’s to allow towns and cities to join the Group Insurance Commission without a union veto. The original law allowed the union to block the municipality from joining unless 70% or more of a committee of local union representatives agreed to the move.
Joe Beese
Not. A. Dime’s. Worth. Of. Difference.
E.D. Kain
DeLeo’s spokesman emailed me with some more specifics. It certainly sounds nowhere near as bad as what happened in WI or other Tea Party-controlled states. I have updated my post. That being said, since this is from DeLeo’s spokesman we should take it with a grain of salt. I’m sure more details will come to light soon.
FeFiFo
Cuomo’s rampage is being ignored as well. Corporate Dems are no better than Republicans when it comes to labor rights.
Martin
I won’t say that there’s nothing to see here, but this is the flip side of single payer that people don’t really want to acknowledge. If you have generous health benefits (and most public workers do. I certainly have better benefits than any single payer plan that would be offered) then single payer is going to lead to a reduction in benefits for some people. For those people where the benefits are contracted (unions) it turns into exactly this kind of a sticky issue.
The MA legislature is making the correct and necessary move here. The state health plan is going to be cheaper than what the unions have negotiated. The state plan is a perfectly adequate plan and nobody should feel bad for the perceived loss of benefits. The plan improved the benefits for so many other represented and non-represented workers that the big picture view is that this is an overwhelming gain for workers, even if some unions have to take a bit of a hit. It’d have been vastly better if the state could have negotiated the overall compensation package with the unions so that some of the cost savings to the state could have been returned to the workers in some way.
Expect to see the same kind of story emerge out of Vermont due to their single-payer plan, and if CA does jump on single payer next year, which is looking very likely, the epicness of the union shitstorm that will hit the state will be unprecedented.
Just Some Fuckhead
Isn’t this just an effort by the state to downgrade everyone’s insurance? Didn’t we decide during the run-up to ACA that the only to get everyone covered was to get everyone shittier coverage?
(Just asking.)
amorphous
@FeFiFo: I don’t know why I was so surprised when I saw how Cuomo was actually going to be governing here. Better than Crazy Crazy, obviously, but New York has prob. lems.
PeakVT
@Arrik: It looks terrible and it’s ham-handed. And it will give Senator Ken Doll and others a boost as some people will vote R out of frustration or spite.
But, as the country moves fitfully, clumsily, and painfully towards a single payer system, we’ll probably see more of this kind of thing. When state government set up state run programs, the easiest place to get healthy, paying customers will be their own employees. It’s too bad the unions weren’t be brought on board, but I think most couldn’t be, no matter how much negotiation took place.
Martin
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yes. Single payer is basically forcing all health care toward the mean. For some people, that’s a massive improvement. For most people, it’s a minor change. But for a few people, it’s a relatively big hit. Some unions are going to be in that last group, particularly some public unions (police, fire) in blue states.
flounder
I moved to MA from Arizona about 6 months ago and I seriously am doubting all the hype about it being a blue state. The radio stations (hosts) are probably even more tea tantrum-ed out than the ones in Arizona. I can’t even listen to sports radio here for very long because some idiot will start going off Fonzi of freedom style.
Much of the industry in Boston is based on finance, and I know a lot of people who are apologists for the big banks and corporations. Do they support gay marriage or abortion? Sure, probably superficially, and they probably think of themselves as liberal, but their bread is buttered with extreme right-wing economic doctrine…and that is why Scott Brown is Senator.
In addition, the Boston Herald is about the most right-wing insane paper I have ever seen. They had a cover today that I kid you not proclaimed that Trump had kicked the president in the nuts or something and declared “Out-Trumped” or something catchy like that. My father-in-law (reading said paper) excitedly said to me this morning “that Trump sure is a happy guy, he’s got the president running away from him and he showed everyone who’s boss.” When I explained what a douche bag I think Trump is, my retired union father-in-law looked disappointed.
kay
@Martin:
It’s bad timing. It may not matter that much, though. I went to a meeting Tuesday night on the Ohio effort to repeal SB 5 and it was all unions.
They’re not promoting it as a partisan issue. No mention of dems or Repubs. They’re taking a straight pro-union stance, because that polls better.
The AFL-CIO rep said they did polling and “restore collective bargaining” polls at 60%, but when they add a Party identifier it drops ten points.
In other words, it’s a fairness issue, like raising the minimum wage was, and they think that’s stronger than a partisan ID.
Bob Loblaw
You’re just going to have to concede that Democrats are no longer a strictly pro-union party.
They have other priorities, and when union interests (like protecting their negotiated health insurance deals they traded for wages) don’t align, then that’s that.
One of the single biggest cornerstones of the Democratic agenda is cutting health care spending. You can’t say you’re in favor of a move to a single payer system unless you’re simultaneously willing to deny people their current coverage setup.
PeakVT
@Joe Beese: Yeah, except that in Mass the Democrats aren’t trying to cut off union dues or force annual re-certification or anything like that. So, other than the massive differences, the move in Mass is exactly like the Republican moves in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Caz
Ho hum, sounds strange, in a blue state. Seriously?? When this was going on in Ohio and Wisconsin, you cried nazi and devil, so now it happens in a D state, and it’s like “Hmm, I wonder what’s going on.” It’s called hypocrisy when you treat the same issue differently based on party affiliation. The reason is because unions are costing states lots of money which they can’t afford in these tough times. Both R’s and D’s are having fiscal problems, so it shouldn’t surprise you that both are having to resort to this.
It still cracks me up how lame your post is about this compared to how vicious you all were to the R’s who did the same exact thing!
Typical balloon juice hypocrisy. Pathetic. This is precisely why this site is laughable and why I visit it for a good laugh every so often. I really feel sorry for you all.
Observer
I’ve said it before and I guess I’ll say it again:
Taken as a whole, Democrats have no beliefs in anything and don’t actually stand for any specific principle.
This case is just another in a long line of things people thought was true but turned out to be otherwise.
Stillwater
@kay: That’s a smart move. It’s better when good policy can stand on its own rather than take a back seat to larger political and party goals. Ideally this leads to Democratic reps supporting what’s already viewed as good policy by their constituencies. It puts the ‘representative’ back in representative democracy.
Union Power!
Martin
@kay: Yeah, I agree with that. I don’t know the details of MAs attempt to negotiate to the same outcome with the unions, but I know that should we get there in CA that the very Dem legislature and Dem governor will almost certainly have to go the same route. Here in CA, the unions are very competitive and very powerful. Each union will want to show that they got more from the state in exchange for the reduction in health benefits. Ultimately, they might negotiate to a reasonable outcome, but I seriously doubt that.
Respecting collective bargaining rights is important, not just in appearance but in function as well. These broad state programs are a bit of an outlier, however, since they apply to everyone in the state, not just public employees and not just represented workers. It’s a bit like if the unions had a provision in their contract that they not pay sales tax, and then the state passes a sales tax. Should the unions be exempt from the state program just because of the contract? Well, no, that’d be unfair to everyone else in the state. But the unions don’t really care about everyone else in the state – their job (rightfully so) is to care about the members of the union. So I think these kinds of things are inevitable in every state that moves to a state health care plan. The state is right to move in that direction, and the unions are right to demand concessions for the change in benefits. I suspect that consensus between the two parties will be rare, and as a result states will simply impose their plan.
I don’t think people quite understand how many unions the state needs to deal with. My employer, a division of the state government, has 26 unions to negotiate with. That’s just one part of the state government. Even if some of the bargaining units come to an agreement, it’s pretty much guaranteed that some will not – and they’ll get shafted as a result. It’s not the kind of a discrepancy that the state can afford to leave on the books – with some groups of workers on a state plan and some groups not.
Dave
@Caz: Ummm….it’s not the same issue. In Wisconsin and Ohio, it’s about the wholesale destruction of unions. In Mass it’s about bringing unions into the state healthcare plan.
See, it’s like an apple and an orange. And you obviously can’t fucking tell one from the other.
Cluttered Mind
I’m from Massachusetts, and perhaps I can offer some insight. The Democratic Party of Massachusetts is not what you would ordinarily think of when you think of the Democratic Party. Massachusetts has been governed by the Democrats for so long that the party has corruption pretty much everywhere. The Republican Party of Massachusetts is pretty much a joke at the state and local level, so the Democrats have evolved to the point where they act more like you would expect a party in south america that has total dominance over a country with no realistic challenges to act. They are not by any means left-wing, they simply care about maintaining their power.
I’d also add that the reports of Massachusetts being a blue state are highly overstated. There’s an extremely active and thriving right wing media in Massachusetts, led by the Boston Herald and several truly odious radio hosts. Boston, my hometown, is also unfortunately known for having a serious racism problem. On top of all that, there is a strong anti-tax movement in Massachusetts that you’d never know about if you didn’t live there. Massachusetts might go for Democrats reliably in presidential elections, but the state is far more complicated than just calling a “blue state” would let people know.
Bostondreams
@Caz:
Perhaps you should laugh at yourself, as this in fact is NOT the same thing as Wisconsin. But then, facts and reality are irrelevant in your world.
Svensker
@Joe Beese:
And did you read the comment directly above yours? No? Of course, not. Joe Beese, the fat everyman, flails again.
lllphd
@Joe Beese:
no, joe, huge HUGE diff.
pay attention to what folks on the ground here are saying; this is actually a decent move. note that it strictly targets healthcare, period. note also that healthcare costs are the THE biggest expense on all budgets. those mentioning here that this allows townships and cities to better manage their budgets while still consolidating healthcare costs for bargaining with the insurance companies, this is a good thing. the threat of a union veto is tough; it’s sorta the union’s job to do what’s best for their members, the same way it works with shareholders.
but the legislature has to govern with the greater good in mind. deval patrick is pretty damn savvy with keeping the MA budget balanced; not many states can say this.
so please, try to avoid damning with such a broad brush; it’s one of those scalpel moves obama talked about. not ideal, but until there’s single payer, MA has the best system going, let me tell ya.
and just to drive the point home, i live two houses away from my local school, and a teacher just left here; we’d talked about this. note also that there were no protests, etc., because all these workers know this has to be done to save their pensions.
rickstersherpa
One of the reasons single payer plans never got very far under Carter administration, and one of the things that hurt Clinton plan, was the AFL-CIO’s lack of enthusiasm for any plan that diminished Union health care plans that existed in the 1970s and 80s. I am not saying who is right or wrong here, (of course the right will play this up, but it is far different than what Kasich, Walker, LePage, etc. are doing, which ultimately aims of stripping public employess of both their collective bargaining rights, health care plans, and pension benefits), as I don’t know enough.
Overall, it would be in the best interest of the Commonwealth and for controlling health care costs for if everyone was in a single insurance pool.
beergoggles
The police, municipal and the other unions this affects have been avoiding using the state run healthcare (GIC) and the health insurance costs for those municipalities have doubled since romneycare.
This is the amendment: http://www.malegislature.gov/Bills/187/House/H03400/Amendment/749.1/FurtherText
The only thing that worries me is that the people who have been pushing this is the Pioneer Institute – conservative think tank – probably koch funded.
beergoggles
@flounder: MA is a collection of liberal enclaves surrounded by swamp yankees. The liberals are totally over radio shock jocks and the Herald so they cater to their only available audience.
PWL
Well, this is how fascism will come to America.
Per this story and the one above about voter suppression, the Repubs are working, bit by bit, to turn America into a one-party state.
But it’s the “frog in the pot” story–stick a frog in a pot of boiling water and it will jump out immediately. But stick a frog in a pot of water and raise the temperature a few degrees at a time, and it will boil to death without noticing it’s happening. Because the Repubs are undermining
real democracy in this country by increments, people won’t notice what’s happening until it’s too late.
The Repubs talk a lot about “Freedom and democracy,” but it’s really just words in their mouths. To them it’s something they export to brown people with oil at the point of a gun.
flounder
@beergoggles: Makes sense, the swamp yankees thing.
Also I have no idea if the Union health care thing is good or bad, my point was that Mass as a liberal bastion seems overrated to me. I do know that my in-laws are both ex-municipal union and they have what appears to be great insurance.
srv
@PWL:
Liberals’ equivalent of Birtherism.
beergoggles
@flounder: Well to put it in perspective, GIC still has amazingly good health insurance – lower copays than a lot of insurance at private companies, better coverage, but it’s on a tiered system for costs based on provider quality reviews.
According to one of my friends on disability who was pissed at the change: under his BCBS municipal plan he gets unlimited chiropractor visits per year whereas the best GIC plan fully covers only 20 visits. I haven’t looked to check that nor have I ever been to a chiropractor, but that doesn’t seem too extreme..
karen marie
I called my MA state rep’s office and was told that the amendment would “allow” unions to negotiate with cities and towns for 30 days, but if no agreement were reached, whatever the cities and towns wanted would be forced on the unions.
But, the staff person insisted, unions’ right to negotiate was not being eliminated.
“Hahahaha,” I said, in reply. “This is why I changed my party affiliation from Democratic to independent, after voting straight Democratic for 30+ years.”
The MA state senate doesn’t do their part to fuck over the working people of the Commonwealth for another month, I have no expectation that their real goal is to lower health care costs.
Just Some Fuckhead
@efgoldman: But if the benefits were the same, presumably unions wouldn’t veto the change?
Bill Murray
Wouldn’t it have been a better idea to negotiate this with the unions rather than saying essentially, we are going to change your previously negotiated benefit structure, change the rules that once allowed you a say and if you don’t like it too bad.
I mean if you give a crap about unions and workers etc.
jcgrim
The state needs privatizers to save us from (fill in the blank with disaster du jour). This is a step towards privatization of public services where public employees are the last group of workers who have a union to negotiate working conditions and benefits.
Corporate workers can be hired on contract or fired for looking cross eyed, not so with public employees. Yet.
Selling public services to the outsourcers can only be PROFITABLE if they employ slave and child labor- no benefits. Rewriting public sector protection laws is how our Galtian overloards will guarantee higher PROFITS after our elected officials sell off management of state services. It’s how the 2 parties reach bipartisan agreement.
NR
@Just Some Fuckhead:
That’s crazy talk! Just move along, there’s nothing to see here.
Southern Beale
Here in Tennessee they are about to repeal the 1978 law which allows teachers to collectively bargain. But fear not, because the Republican-controlled legislature has a great idea! Replacing unions will be … wait for it … employee handbooks!
Huzzah!
trixie larue
What do Dems do these days when they hold the majority. They try to see how fast they can lose it. It’s not about caring more about the citizenry – it’s a race to the bottom for stupidity.
Downpuppy
@Bill Murray: Negotiation has been tried under the 70% rule, and failed. Tried for year after year. I think this is limited enough, and obvious enough, that nobody is going to walk over it.
For what it’s worth, the state has been fighting health cost inflation at the other end too. Most of the big insurers in MA are non-profits, and they’ve been semi-forced to stop paying their boards & even cut CEO pay.
Perspecticus
As someone affected by this law, I can tell you exactly how it happened. Massachusetts has a law that says public employees can collectively bargain the terms of their employment and this includes the terms of health insurance. Somewhere along the way, the Commonwealth exempted itself from its own law. This was not “fair” to the 300+ municipalities who still had to follow the law, nor was it “fair’ to all the people whose private employers either do not provide health care or who have no say in what health care they receive.
At its most basic, there were two solutions. 1) We could work to compel the Commonwealth to obey its own laws and work to ensure private sector workers receive quality health care. 2) We could work to strip the rights of municipal and county employees to determine their health care. You can see which our legislature chose.
Now this all touches on an important subject: fairness. In 2011, fairness is not lifting the least of us up and providing solid benefits and wages for all. Rather, fairness is reducing and/or eliminating the wages and benefits of people who are doing better than us. That way, we are all fairly screwed. The worst part of this phenomenon is the fact that it is the middle class and lower classes who should be leading the fight in favor of increased benefits and wages, but instead we see many of us perplexingly and frustratignly arguing against these things.
My prediction I hope to be wildly off-base about? Within five years, public sector unions will be illegal and will be phased out completely within 20 years. In the meantime, there will be little left to do but sweep away the last 17-odd percent of private sector unions. Then, all of you folks screeching about thug janitors, thug teachers, and thug cafeteria workers will finally have the shit sandwich you all are so fervently, if ignorantly, arguing in favor of.
Chin up, though. The race to the bottom is going strong and we’re winning. And who doesn’t love a winner?
Perspecticus
@lllphd: Deval Patrick is savvy- he specifically waited until after his re-election to bring this plan to the state house.
PeakVT
@jcgrim: That’s moronic. Did you click through on any of the links provided?
Judas Escargot
@flounder:
I’ve lived here since I was two, and what you say is true: Massachusetts has been moving slowly rightward for a long time. Between demographics (the state’s median age is in the mid-40s and rising) and the areas where most of the job growth has been (finance/banking, medical/bio, real estate and defense), this is probably inevitable.
When people think of “Blue Massachusetts”, they’re really thinking of Boston. Outside the immediate metro area, it’s a very different story (word of advice– if you’re ever in Essex County talking to a blue-collar white male over 55, assume that you’re talking to a racist until proven otherwise.)
I expect to see Governor Brown in the corner office by the end of this decade.
Elie
@Martin:
Thank you Martin for an intelligent and informed comment. It is important to understand that every desired and good policy change sometimes results in consequences that could be perceived as “bad” if viewed through a restricted lens.
Good luck with getting it understood. People seem to have their “ideas” about what is happening and sometimes adopt a frame to interpret it. FACTS do matter sometime however and complex policies and realities are, well, complex.
negative 1
It really is a local issue dealing with the unions entering the state pool. Although it benefits the state not the unions, it’s not union busting. I agree that the optics look bad, and that is a problem, but in this case it is TRULY a local issue.
That said, I caution those who are not from around here into believing that Democratic in SE New England is the same as Democratic in other parts of the country. Many people in this area are Democrats only because of the unions – some are just as socially conservative or racist as rethugs in other areas. Very corrupt political machines had been around in the past which were basically a labor party which ran through the Dem ticket, and though they are rare now the memory lingers. It certainly lingers enough that more traditional progressives sometimes find themselves very opposed to the unions. Additionally, plenty of Dems in the area do not support progressive causes, they vote the union ticket. That is why RI, MA, CT should be thought of as Dem, but are certainly WAY more conservative in the true sense of the word than most people think. A lot gets lost in the translation when the stories get reported on the national level.
Linnaeus
@efgoldman:
After hearing more about this, I will say that it isn’t as bad as when I first read about it. It definitely isn’t the same as the draconian anti-labor measures in Wisconsin and Ohio.
But I can understand the pushback on the part of union leaders for a few reasons. There is the backdrop of a decades-long effort to curtail unions and union rights and to some, this looks like yet another step in that direction. While everything else may still be on the table in terms of collective bargaining, the reasoning behind this current bill can be distorted into the usual right-wing line of “unions cost us too much” and that can then be used to justify further erosions of collective bargaining rights that are, for now, “safe”. I’m not saying this will happen in Massachusetts, nor am I saying that MA Democrats would necessarily go along with that. But that opening needs to be guarded against.
One – of many – things I’ve learned in my experience working for a labor union is that servicing a collective bargaining agreement is pretty much a daily endeavor. And if you do let seemingly minor violations go, it does send a signal that an employer can get away with more, and the employer will try to do so.
This may end up being the better move in the long term. But I would hope that in the meantime, key alliances aren’t overly damaged as part of the process. We’ll just have to see.
brendancalling
really? it seems strange to you?
let me make things clear: politicians on both sides of the aisle (coke or pepsi) don’t care about democracy in this country. They know who pays the bills, and it’s the corporations. Yes, yes: send your thousands of small people-powered donations. It is to laugh: your thousands of small donations bought you more bailouts of wall street, a foreclosure prevention program that never worked, an approach to health care reform that did nothing but empower insurance companies even more, and a new unaffordable war on top of the others we’re already fighting. That is your hope and your change. That is the best it’s gonna get.
The game is over, and has been since “citizens united” (and probably before). The decision to side with AT&T the other day, barely covered, is another nail in that coffin. The vote by the Massachusetts Democrats is just more of the same.
This is why blogging and writing about politics is such a waste of time. This fantasy that somehow public pressure will slow the decline and fall is precious. No one cares. Ideas have no influence on anything or anyone: the only thing that matters is who can afford to pay, and who profits.
yes yes, tell me all about how the democrats are pro-gay rights, pro-choice (ahem Stupak, ahem DC abortion ban), and pro-union. Tell me alllllll about it.
It’s game over guys, you just haven’t realized it yet. I saw people just like the blogosphere this past weekend, hunched over a slot machine hoping that maybe this time they’ll be the big winner.
2liberal
@flounder:
the herald was owned by Murdoch and is now owned by a former news corp executive. The boston globe is owned by the new york times.
Rihilism
Granted, municipalities need to control health care costs. I know it who would be time consuming, but why can’t municipalities force unions into accepting the state plan by simply noting that otherwise they’ll be forced into massive layoffs? Sure, some union leaders might/will be stupid enough to argue the point but it’s been my experience that rank and file are usually willing to make concessions if said concessions are 1.) easily proven to be necessary and 2). will protect jobs.
Collective bargaining is not, by nature, convenient. Removing aspects of collective bargaining through legislation is convenient. I’m hard pressed to explain why this “convenience” is not equally applicable to salaries, pensions and working conditions…
Lihtox
I’m no expert on health insurance, but I do know that even in Canada and the UK, there are private health insurance policies people can buy, which supplement the national coverage. If Romneycare is inferior to what the union workers already had, couldn’t the difference be covered through some sort of supplemental insurance, negotiated by the unions? That is, let Romneycare pay for the basics for the union workers, and then have a fund to pay for whatever they’re missing out on? And if that’s more expensive than what they have now, then what you’re doing is asking the unions to take a cut in their benefits, which is a perfectly fair thing to do, but in the context of negotiations, not by fiat.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Linnaeus:
Then you know what? The unions should have negotiated, got some concessions and avoided this fight. The move to the single payer system WILL happen. It has to. The logic ought to be clear to all of those involved. The unions have always had the ability to avoid this fight.
I have a friend who works high up in a municipal government in Massachusetts. Solid Democrat. The unions drive him bananas. He has about 30 of them that he has to deal with, because they are broken up into tiny little units. Fiefdoms as efgoldman put it. Not only is the health issue consuming HALF of the city’s budget, he spends an insane amount of time dealing with every tiny local.
If the unions make this a hill to die on, they’re crazy. Negotiate, dammit.
jfxgillis
mistermix:
efgoldman is mostly correct.
As a matter of politics, the deal is this. The legislature is trying give the cities and towns the leverage to get the cities and towns out of the health-insurance-providing business altogether by giving them the power to impose notably shittier deals than the G.I.C., thereby driving unions to the state plan(s).
Stepping up to the next level of abstraction, since the original Romneycare was only slightly, if at all, concerned with cost containment (nothing wrong with that, it wasn’t supposed to be), the next task is cost containment, and this is only one prong in a set of multiple reforms on tap.
The BOTTOM LINE is that what Massachusetts is doing is an advance toward the progressive goal of just, humane, affordable universal health care coverage.
What Wisconsin is doing is budget-cutting by union-busting to finance lower taxes for the rich.
agorabum
@efgoldman: Seconded; while unions are a good thing in general, the specifics of different CBA’s can be troubling or downright bad (for everyone not in the union).
A public employee union is different than a private sector one; for private the dispute is between labor and management. If labor gets less, management typically reallocates the surplus to itself. Sometimes it is used to lower prices (a benefit to the public at large) to increase market share, but presumably that will then increase profit, resulting in, yep, more surplus to management.
In the public, the surplus will be spent on other government functions (i.e. on the citizenry).
So if the MA local/state governments can get obtain some real savings with mass health plan negotiations, the surplus can go to roads, parks, teachers, etc.
With that prior 70% veto rule (allowing the unions to block the health savings, undoubtedly passed at a high-water mark time of union influence on legislation), this is a change that looks to be fair to the unions (they all still have health coverage) and good for the citizens (more bang for their tax buck).
Thinking: yes, it is harder than immediately taking sides.
Linnaeus
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
That’s a fair argument, though I do wonder what concessions the unions would have been able to win, particularly in the current economic and political context.
Earl Butz
Not going to hang with the apologists on this thread. This is a bullshit, anti-union move. Unions have the RIGHT to bargain for whatever they feel like, and to put restrictions on what a union can bargain for is union-busting, no matter what excuses you come up with for it.
Joe Beese is wrong.
But Caz, unfortunately, has a damn good point. The scope of the thing is different, but it is union-busting all the same.
FlyingToaster
Most of the cogent points have been noted above, but I’ll add another boots-on-the-ground datum:
In my Boston suburb, the unions voted down joining the state health plan last year; this year, they’re looking at massive layoffs from the schools and DPW and smaller layoffs from the police and firefighters. The superintendent of schools, before resigning, laid out the budget, and pointed out that every dollar of the state’s “local aid” is going into health insurance. And the town doesn’t just have 4 unions, it has to negotiate with at least a dozen.
The biggest difference between the state’s plan and existing municipal plans is higher co-pays, and forcing retirees go on to Medicare after age 65.
Sloegin
It’s union-busting.
This time it’s union-busting because Mass Demo’s are doing what they think best for everybody, instead of R’s union-busting because they hate unions.
Six of one, half-dozen of the other.
Oh, and passing it at 11:30 at night, gutless move.
Hugely
lol this is an interesting thread with a mixture of pragmatists, hair on fire GOS commenters, gooper trolls, and union members.
my vote is that this is what is best for the public – if you can save more teachers, cops, firefighters jobs by doing this then it is worth it.
and before anyone gets on my shit I was covered in a Bargaining Unit in MA in the past
mclaren
Nothing “stunning” about this. It’s obvious, predictable, and inevitable.
There are two ways to reduce unsustainable spending on health care:
[1] reduce the cost of health care…which would mean putting an end to the fabulously lucrative cartels and monopolies and bribes and collusive sweetheart deals used by medical devicemakers and doctors and imaging clinics and hospitals to enrich themselves beyond the wildest dreams of avarice (a $30 disposable plastic surgical implement gets billed for $1200);
[1]…or: reduce the ability of the public to get access to health care. That’s coming along nicely with the infinite and unending premium increases in health insurance, but what to do about public employees, whose health care gets paid for by the state? Simple! Strip the public employees of collective bargaining rights, thereby ending their access to affordable health care.
Rihilism
The impulse here seems to be that these negotiations are difficult, the municipal unions can be intractable, and there is a greater good to consider, so let’s eliminate the right to negotiate. I’m still not clear why salaries, pensions and working conditions are immune from this impulse.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Rihilism:
Because the health insurance issue is out of control. I’m not sure people get it: the increases in premiums for the coverage they provide is eating up enormous amounts of the municipalities’ budgets. In some cases, more than half of a city’s spending is paying health insurance premiums. Because of the ridiculous fragmentation of the unions, they hardly provide risk-pooling.
That CAN’T remain unchanged. It isn’t a question of whether the change is good or bad. It’s a question of whether not changing is POSSIBLE. It isn’t. The way things are going, there will be no city government, because the health insurance is too expensive to pay for. They will be driven into bankruptcy, and then the ENTIRE union contract will be subject to unilateral change, not just the health insurance.
In the medium and long term, the unions will watch both the number of jobs and the wages that those jobs pay get hammered unless this happens. And in order for it to happen under the current system, a municipality needs each of the couple dozen union locals they deal with to cast 70% of their votes in favor of the change.
They’ve tried negotiating. The bill gives everyone an additional 30 days to come to an amicable agreement. Then the change happens whether they like it or not. This really is the only way to save things.
The reason this is such a problem in Massachusetts in particular is the union fragmentation. The friend I mentioned above has to deal with three different unions just in the police department. It’s ridiculous, it’s inefficient, and if that’s the way the unions insist on on structuring themselves, then the cities are going to have to take some extraordinary measures to get out of situations like this.
Rihilism
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Fair enough. Perhaps it’s just any discussion of eliminating a collective bargaining right makes me nervous. Also, too, let me just say, that as a state employee union member, I’d gladly trade my health-care bargaining right for a state (or U.S., for that matter) single payer system like they are implementing in Vermont…
mclaren
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Yes, exactly right. Muncipalities are suffering from the same progressive budget meltdown that’s destroying entire states on the larger scale and individual families on the smaller scale.
Health care costs are exploding out of control in America. The problem is systemic. Larger risk pools won’t help; cutting the “waste” out of the system won’t help. Reforming medicare won’t help.
What needs to happen is that the current insane monopoly-based cartel-riddled corrupt system for delivering health care in America has to end.
TRANSLATION: Doctors in America can’t continue to make $200,000 per year, 250% as much as doctors in France or Germany. CT scans can’t continue to cost $1850 each compared to $250 in France and $350 in Germany. Simple chem CBC-7 blood panels can’t continue to cost $500 in America versus $35 in Spain or $27 in the Netherlands.
Unless health care costs get under control, everything else in the budget in America is going to melt down. Do the math. Health care costs are exploding exponentially with a doubling time of about 14 years. Do you really think this country can remain functional if, in 14 years, we’re spending 32% of GDP on health care instead of 16%?
How about 28 years from now? Does anyone actually believe we can afford to spend 64% of GDP on delivering health care?
Look, Social Security already takes up 23% of the budget. Military spending accounts for another 28%. There just isn’t much wiggle room left, and all these costs are skyrocket at a mind-boggling rate. Military spending is going up with a doubling time (based on last year’s increase) of 9 years.
Tell me how that’s going to continue for another generation. Explain it to me.
What we’re seeing is the entire American economy starting to blow apart under the financial stress of health care spending. Stripping collective bargaining rights is just the start.
Marek
I’m “on the ground” in MA and I see this for what it is, union-busting. If the legislature was so high-minded, they could have had an actual debate and negotiation, rather than passing it on a snap vote when no one was watching. I will not be supporting any politicians who support this garbage.
@74, the unions do not “insist on structuring themselves” in different bargaining units; the state labor law governs who can be in a bargaining unit together. OBU (one big union) would be great in many cases, but it’s against the law. And, please be specific how any particular union negotiation could have avoided this.