For Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the descriptive phrase is ‘hoisted on his own petard.’
Application of the phrase to Connecticut’s budget situation — where the unions seem to be the ones with the petard problem — would rank as high comedy if the consequences weren’t so serious.
Here we are treated to the sight of state employee unions gasping for air as they try to untangle themselves from their own internal red tape that rejected the $1.6 billion concession deal, even though 57 percent of members approved.
Governor Malloy hinged his budget on his ability to get the deal approved. He failed but in the process he deftly painted the unions as the villains in the drama. Faced with the best labor deal in the country, these members of the entitled class said no, angering even their staunchest supporters in the legislature.
It is clear even to labor leaders that the wind has shifted. While the right to bargain wasn’t limited during the special session, it’s on the table and before the hammer falls, the unions are eager to find a way to shift the blame back to Malloy.
They’ve asked for renegotiation and Malloy hasn’t budged. Yet. Nice principled stand. But tempting as it is to say ‘go ahead with the layoffs,’ that’s not a productive route in this frail economy.
Negotiation is about the art of the possible. The unions are tied up in their own knots and can’t move without a tweak in the deal to allow a re-vote. Think of it as allowing them to save face. It doesn’t have to involve a better deal, just a different deal. And Malloy will have to bend, sacrificing a bit of his credibility in the process.
There’s simply too much at stake at this point not to get this deal done, even if it means negotiating in public.
Math challenge in Bridgeport
Governor Malloy didn’t get far in the special session with an overly broad effort to expand his power to privatize some state services. But the school crisis in Bridgeport offers a nice example of why a privatization argument can be attractive, even for core services.
The central issue is figuring out how to educate 20,000 students on ‘just’ $218 million — $10,900 a head.
Let’s play entrepreneur for a moment and see what might be possible as a back-of-the-napkin business venture. We’ll use a neighborhood test bed of 100 sixth-graders, which would give us $1.09 million to work with. We’ll set up four classrooms ($250,000 for furnished space in Bridgeport) for 25 students each. We’ll hire four subject-specialist teachers at $50,000 each including benefits ($200,000). We won’t have a gym, so we’ll get each pupil a full family membership to a local fitness center ($40,000). Then we’ll get each student an iPad ($75,000) and some reading materials ($50,000). We’ll cater lunch all 180 school days ($100,000). Let’s toss in $125,000 for some instructional technology, insurance and incidental expenses like utilities and substitute teachers. Let’s write ourselves a nice $100,000 check for administering all this and toss in another $50,000 for an administrative assistant to handle all that state paperwork.
Now, what would you like to do with the remaining $100,000? That’s quite a return on our zero investment. Or we could apply it to, say, a $2-a-day cash payment for attendance with monthly performance bonuses. Think that would help achievement levels?
Multiply the example by 200, fold in savings from scale and ask yourself if that’s a deal you might accept.
Obviously, nothing is quite that easy. But a privatization approach that cuts to the essence of the task and lets form follow function has some economic attraction.
Let’s ask the marketplace for solutions before we declare these problems insurmountable.
