Zachary Janowsky at the Yankee Institute’s “Raising Hale” blog reports:
Workers around the country are envious of Connecticut state employees according to their lead negotiator.
Daniel Livingston, chief negotiator for the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition, said other unions want to learn how to imitate their success negotiating with Gov. Dannel Malloy.
Livingston told a meeting of state employees Saturday he would be going to a national meeting of union leaders to teach them, according to three videos posted online by union officials.
“I wasn’t invited there because of me. I was invited there because of you all and what this agreement stands for and what you all helped achieve,” he said. “It is unknown in this country. They want to know how we did it.”
The tentative agreement, according to Malloy, contains $1.6 billion in union concessions. Legislative Republicans, the Office of Fiscal Analysis and others have called the value of the concession deal into question. The Malloy administration has only provided documents to support $1 billion of the total.
Livingston, a lawyer with Livingston, Adler, Pulda, Meiklejohn & Kelly in Hartford, said he was mad at Malloy, but also explained why Malloy had to make the tentative agreement sound worse than it is for state employees.
He said the agreement stands out because of four years promised job security and 11 years of healthcare and pension guarantees, plus future wage increases. According to Livingston, the agreement also increases pensions for Tier II and Tier IIA employees and changes a rule that could have prevented workers from spiking their pensions.
“Now we have an 11-year agreement. I wish it was still 20,” Livingston said. “But 11 years is still unheard of in the country. There’s no one else with an 11-year pension and healthcare agreement. You all, if you ratify this, have security that no other state worker in the country has, and I’d venture to say no other private sector workers.”
Livingston said the negotiators refused to talk with Malloy without a promise of job security.
Read the full story here.
By the way, the economy-destroying governor has bragged that the state is “open for business.” Amazon didn’t get his memo. Thanks to the sales tax on Internet purchases which Mr. Malloy and the Democrat-controlled legislature have successfully enacted, the book retailer has joined Overstock.com in killing any and all affiliate agreements with Nutmeg State businesses.