What is with this union busting in the State Budget?

[arendt]

Sorry for using the Herald as a link; but this story seems to have been disappeared from the media. I had to work hard to find a reference to it, even though it was front page news.

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http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/2011_0414unions_fuming_over_deleos_wisconsin-esque_budget/srvc=news&position=also

Unions fuming over Robert DeLeo’s ‘Wisconsin-esque’ budget
Hillary Chabot By Hillary Chabot
Thursday, April 14, 2011 - Updated 11 hours ago
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Bay State union honchos yesterday struck back against House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo’s $30.45 billion budget that includes legislation giving cities and towns broad powers to raise health-care co-payments and deductibles for their workers.

“It’s almost Wisconsin-esque, I would say, that they would eliminate our right to bargain, sit down and meet with our employer on the issue of health insurance,” said Raymond McGrath, legislative director of SEIU-NAGE. “The movement in the great liberal state of Massachusetts is not to the liberal end of things, it’s to the conservative end of things.”

[Zenlitened]

1. Boston Globe had it today.

Absolutely mind-blowing. :grr:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/04/14/deleos_budget_would_curb_labor/

...House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, setting up a major fight with unions, proposed yesterday to strip local public employees of most of their rights to bargain over health care, as part of a $30.5 billion annual state budget that imposes the largest year-to-year spending cut in two decades.

The proposal to restrict collective bargaining rights, once unthinkable in heavily Democratic Massachusetts, touched off a firestorm, with labor leaders denouncing it as an assault on public workers and local officials calling it a long overdue step to control soaring health costs. DeLeo’s plan follows tougher efforts in Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states to broadly deny union workers such bargaining rights.

The House plan gives local officials, such as mayors and town councils, unfettered authority to set copayments and deductibles for local public employees without having to negotiate with unions. Only the share of premiums paid by employees would be on the health care bargaining table.

Yes, cities and towns need to make changes in the way they pay health benefits. Gov. Patrick has been on this issue for a while, but he's had the good sense to include the unions in the conversation.

Is DeLeo just playing the role of "bad cop," to move those discussions along? Or is he on the ALEC mailing list, too?

:crazy:





edit typo