This afternoon I was listening to Neil Cavuto interview New Jersey Governor Chris Christie while in my car (love XM radio). Christie, as the new Governor of the Garden State, has been taking a lot of slings and arrows from public employee unions because of his strong position that given the sorry state of New Jersey’s state finances, that the unions need to step up and participate in solving the problems (salary reductions, reductions in retirement benefits, and so on). To date, Christie continues to hammer the unions, especially the state’s teachers association, because has has, "yet to see them come to the table with any ideas that put aside their own bests interests in pursuit of the common interest."
Powerful words from New Jersey’s new Republican Governor. Christie pointed out that while the downturn in the economy has hit private sector taxpayers hard, public employee union members have been largely shielded.
Move 3,000 miles West and we have a state budget situation that makes the 9 billion dollar New Jersey problem look like chump change. But similarly, we do not see the state’s major public employee unions stepping up to pitch in to help solve the problem (unless you count the millions of dollars spent to qualify a ballot measure to try and raise taxes as "chipping in).
Now SEIU 1000 (the state’s biggest public employee union) has tweeted and linked to this LA Times blog post about the Governor’s Department of Personnel Administration, Debbie Endsley, sending out a memo that says basically throws out there that the Governor has the right to reduce the pay of state employees to minimum wage if the state budget is not passed in time. In the memo (available in the LA Times post), Endsley goes on to say that employees represented by the four unions who have come to the table and signed off on new terms for their contracts would not be subject to wage reductions or furloughs.
The bottom line — Schwarzenegger is playing hard ball — and two major items on his plate — the 2010-2011 budget, and meaningful pension reform, involve bringing the unions to the table. One has to figure that if state employees start getting their pay reduced to minimum wage, that this will put a lot of pressure on the union bosses to come to the table…
Governor Schwarzenegger should be commended for taking a strong stance in this process. Like with Governor Christie in New Jersey, Governor Schwarzenegger knows it will be a difficult task to get a union to act outside of its own narrow interests. This is a good way to get the ball rolling.