Fate of the Unions

The phrase “union abuses” can conjure a sordid array of images, but for many, police details are first on the list. As a 2004 Beacon Hill Institute study pointed out, Massachusetts is the only state in the country that requires trained law-enforcement officers to sleep or read the Herald near construction sites in exchange for mammoth amounts of money—money that is later factored into their pensions. (The unions have always justified the practice on the grounds of public safety, which might wash if, as noted by the same study, our state didn’t still have some of the worst car accident rates in the nation.) In the past months, we’ve seen a few classics of the form, such as the Gloucester cop who was hired to work eight hours at a private construction site, showed up late, worked two hours, left to work another detail, and then double-billed for the first.

But the police have by no means cornered the outrageous-abuses market. What about the schoolteachers in Quincy who went on strike because the mayor asked them to contribute 20 percent to their healthcare premiums (a not-unreasonable request, given that many private-sector employees pay around 25 percent)? Or the firefighters in Newton attacking the mayor at every turn because he wants them to prove they’re actually sick when they take their 24-hour sick days (often in August), racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime? Or the firefighters in Boston who adamantly opposed random drug testing and annual physicals, only to have that blow up in their faces when it was reported that one of the jakes killed battling the West Roxbury restaurant fire was drunk at the time and the other had cocaine in his system? Or the T, which keeps jacking up fares merely to maintain the current levels of poor service, while offering its employees retirement with full health benefits after 23 years, regardless of age—a deal the state’s Transportation Finance Commission called “among the most generous in the country”?

“They are just greedy beyond comprehension,” says David Tuerck, Suffolk University economist and head of the Beacon Hill Institute. “And I don’t think it can be explained anymore by political [power]. It’s just a failure on the part of politicians to think through their own self-interest.”

Which is to say, there may now be more political hay to be made by solving the state’s financial ills than by blowing kisses to the unions. But our pols have long feared making that stand, even if doing so properly could result in lower taxes and better services for their constituents. It’s not enough to blame them for their cravenness; you also have to look to an electorate so bewitched by unions’ sentimental appeal that it has never provided a bludgeon for the right politician to take some swings. There’s no question voters should be more than fed up with this state of affairs, paying ever higher property taxes to fund the kind of lavish benefits they’re not getting anymore in the private sector. In Boston, for instance, it takes five average taxpayers to cover the city’s 90 (!) percent share of one employee’s family health plan—the cost of which has nearly doubled since 2001. Statewide, property taxes have gone up 32 percent since 2001, even as social service programs have been cut, meaning that taxpayers are shelling out more to pay for benefits they’re not getting, in exchange for fewer services. There’s “fairness” for you.

“There is a collision course,” says Michael Widmer, head of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, “between the long-standing power of the public employee unions on one hand, and the inability of state and local governments to continue to support the benefit structures, the health and pension plans, on the other. That reality is, I think, forcing this issue to the surface.”

Right now, though, the urgency is surfacing only in the overzealous pursuit of new revenue sources, like local option taxes (which were torpedoed by DiMasi) and casinos. The governor is estimating that his proposed gambling palaces will result in an annual $400 million windfall, $200 million of which would go to tax credits. That figure has been widely debunked by skeptics, but let’s give our governor the benefit of the doubt. Here’s the thing, though: According to one study, we’re squandering $100 million a year on police details alone. If Patrick had the guts to go after that perk, and unions were also compelled to join the GIC—saving another $100 million out of the gate—we would have as much money for municipalities as we would under the absolute best possible scenario with casinos, only without that dull shine of whorishness, the appalling regressiveness, and the outright shame of following Connecticut’s lead in anything. Win-win-win.

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