Lee Elci: All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome, welcome, welcome. 37 minutes after the hour of 8:00. And I’m playing this song specifically for my next guest. Red Jahncke, who just wrote a column called One Way or Another, and he’s joining us right now. Red, Good morning. How are you today?
Red Jahncke: Hey, I’m good, Lee.
Lee Elci: So one way or another, one way or another. Are we talking more about Connecticut employees and the wage freeze that you want to put into place?
Red Jahncke: Yeah. I think you were supposed to introducing me each week as Mr. 33 percent.
Lee Elci: That’s right, I forgot. I’ll take care of that for you… that Connecticut state employees have received a 33% wage increase under Governor Lamont compared to a 23% increase for private sector workers. So how about a little more details for those of the listeners that are joining us for the first time?
Red Jahncke: I think the key here is the misunderstanding and the dysfunction in Hartford that surrounds this whole issue. So Governor Lamont, in his budget proposal issued in February, laid out all the evidence any would one would need to appreciate the severe impact of these wage increases and benefit increases for state employees.
So let me roll out a couple of a numbers. The Office of Fiscal Analysis crunched the numbers, and they came out with the following. The governor put $500 million in what’s called the Reserve for Salary Adjustments. That is an account where money is put for future wage increases for state employees. And OFA also pulled the numbers together on the fringe benefit increase under the governor’s budget. That is $740 million in his proposed budget. Together, that’s $1.2 billion going to state employees.
Also in the governor’s budget proposal is the required calculation of the constitutional spending cap. Only $2.1 billion of an increase in spending. So you have $1.2 billion going to state employees [out] of the $2.2 billion. Very little left over to spend on services for citizens.
Yet Democrats who are complaining about the fiscal guardrails. The fiscal guardrails have nothing to do with the squeeze on spending like It’s the constitutional spending cap. If they did away with the fiscal guardrails entirely, the constitutional spending cap — it’s in the Constitution — would remain, and it would limit spending, the allowed increase in spending to $2.2 billion. The problem is they’re paying their union buddies a whole huge amount of money and at the same time crying poverty.
Lee Elci: But this upcoming state employee contract, the approval is virtually a certainty due to the fact that the Dems have the supermajority, etc. in the General Assembly. Are there any potential factors or scenarios that you foresee that might throw a monkey wrench into that approval process?
Red Jahncke: Well, the unions have set up the mechanics of approval of their contracts in a way where one way or another, they get their increases. Here’s how it works. The governor has to submit the proposed agreement, [to] the General Assembly. They vote to reject an outlandish agreement. What happens? It goes out not for renegotiation. It goes out for arbitration. It goes to a labor arbitrator. When it’s been arbitrated, it comes back to the legislature. If that arbitrated agreement is rejected, it goes out for final arbitration and never comes back. Final arbitration is conducted by the labor arbitrator.
Now, let’s call a spade a spade. Labor arbitrators are ”homer refs.” They essentially work for the unions because. There’s no such thing as arbitration between employers and non-unionized workforces. They are, of course, going to preserve the existence of unions and protect the interests of unions.
Lee Elci: So let me see if I get this straight. So by the small chance they reject it, it doesn’t go back to the governor to rehash and renegotiate. It goes to an arbitrator. That seems like an insane idea. I mean, that’s like you said, that’s a win win for the unions every single time, seven days a week, right?
Red Jahncke: Yeah. The employer, Governor Lamont, and the unions jointly pick a labor arbitrator, but you’re just picking someone out of a pool of homer refs, no truly independent, objective refereeing going on. It is all biased toward the unions. It goes through two rounds of this, then it goes after final arbitration.
Let’s look at that. Right. Never comes back to the legislature. And so the final final decision on the contracts is by a labor arbitrator. That’s violates a fundamental constitutional principle. It’s called the non-delegation principle. The U.S. Congress must, under the Constitution, follow through on its obligations and exercise its powers. That’s fundamental. Here you have the Connecticut Legislature delegating to a labor arbitrator the most important cost item in the budget. It’s over $10 billion annually. And, you know, the budget is $26, $27 billion annually, $10 billion of which is pay to state employees. That’s the biggest number in the budget. And you’re delegating it to one labor arbitrator!
Lee Elci: That seems about as wrong as you can make it. Red Jahncke is our guest, as he is each and every Wednesday. He is a national columnist. He has his own website, the red-line.com. You can read his columns there, of course. Every day he’s videotaping our segment. So it up it goes. And we usually grab it and throw it up on our sites as well.
So Red, collective bargaining is not permitted in states like the Carolinas or Utah. So, I can’t imagine that would ever happen in the state of Connecticut. The unions are just too entrenched here, correct?
Red Jahncke: Yeah. They’re, they’re totally entrenched. [Yet] it could be that the Democrats will actually posture because the amount of money going to state employees, 60% of the allowable increase in spending is pretty embarrassing. Pretty outrageous. Maybe they don’t want their fingerprints on it. Maybe the Democrats will vote against the contract, posture as fiscally responsible. Send it out to the arbitrators with a wink and a nod to the state employees saying, don’t worry, it’s going to the arbitrator. He’s going to take care of you. Right? Not totally inconceivable that that might happen.
Lee Elci: Diabolical. As a matter of fact. Yeah.
Red Jahncke: Amazing.
Lee Elci: Collective bargaining is not permitted in some states, but that’s that’s that’s never going to come here. I mean, the Carolinas, you mentioned and Utah. But that’s never going to come here.
Red Jahncke: I was going to point out is there is an Office of Legal Research, a legal analysis of another interesting feature of collective bargaining in this state. The law says that if the contract or any of its provisions are contrary to state law, the contract prevails. They were asked to analyze how [a] challenge that would come out in court. And they said “It could be that the court would decide that labor contracts do indeed supersede state law”. That’s an amazing concept. So in answer to your question of will this ever change? It doesn’t sound like, right.
Lee Elci: Running out of time, but, there’s a new goals champion in the NHL. Is that good or bad for the NHL? It seems like you would want Gretzky to be the all time everything. And now he’s not right.
Red Jahncke: Well, you know, Gretzky is the all time everything. He’s not the top goal scorer — hats off to Alex Ovechkin, who has now got that title. But Alex is not the playmaker that Wayne Gretzky was. And Gretzky retains the Title in goals and assists. He’s way ahead of Ovechkin on that metric. So he remains the greater of the great ones.
Lee Elci: Well, it was a hell of a night for Ovechkin. It was, interesting to see Gretzky and him out there.
Red Jahncke: Yeah. He was so gracious. He was he really was. And Ovechkin was so gracious. Here are two great guys. They combine with their extraordinary talent [and] just wonderful personalities and generosity of spirit. It was a wonderful night.
Lee Elci: All right. Red. Listen, I gotta run. I’ll talk to you next week. Thank you, sir.
Red Jahncke: Hey Lee, enjoyed it. Thank you sir.
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.