Christie Loves Collective Bargaining

19 Mar

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie “loves collective bargaining” so much, he wants to skip it altogether.

Christie decided he won’t negotiate health benefits with public workers, opting instead to try and change the law to increase their contributions toward health premiums.

I agree with Christie and Senate President Steve Sweeney that state workers should contribute more to their health care (although I don’t know if 30% across-the-board is the right number). However, this unilateral decision to try and bypass the bargaining table is reminiscent of what Gov. Scott Walker did in Wisconsin, signing a new law that slashes public-employees collective bargaining rights (a law that has been temporarily blocked by a judge).

The Communications Workers of America, which represents about 40,000 state workers, have announced a plan they say would increase employees’ share of insurance premiums to about 14 percent and save taxpayers more than $200 million by 2013. So much for Christie’s meme that the unions are unwilling to negotiate.

The only difference between Wisconsin and New Jersey is Democrats are in charge of the legislature. So we’ll see how this plays out.