Apparently, a blinding flash of the obvious can strike labor officials who suddenly find themselves having to balance state or municipal budgets. Stephen Sweeney, president of the New Jersey State Senate and a top official in New Jersey’s ironworkers union, argued that the state can no longer afford the benefits won over the years by public sector unions. “At some point, you reach the limit of your ability to pay,” he said. Similarly, Oregon Governor Theodore R. Kulongoski is demanding wage concessions from the state employees, whose union he used to represent as its lawyer. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is demanding $100 million in union concessions (he’s a former teachers’ union organizer), and in New York, Governor David Paterson says that if public sector unions don’t agree to a pay freeze and to re-open contracts, large-scale layoffs are on the way (he is a union ally whose father is a top advisor to several unions). The unions are reacting with cries of “betrayal,” and are accusing their former allies of political posturing, which must be another way of saying fiscal responsibility.
