Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations

The legislature has pretty much put the kibosh on binding-arbitration reform for this session, but the growing grass-roots movement to fix this system of contract coercion goes on.

Gov. John G. Rowland's proposed budget included a provision to allow towns and cities to opt out of compulsory arbitration, a decidedly pro-labor system implemented in 1979 for public-employee contracts. Early on, the legislature's Appropriations Committee stripped the plan from the budget and sentenced it to death by inaction.

But the Democratic Labor Party wasn't finished suffocating reforms. The Labor Committee likewise refused to report out several bills, including those that would have given municipalities greater power in rejecting arbitration awards. The committee also halted consideration of amendments to the Municipal Employee Relations and the Teacher Negotiation acts so they would function under the same, slightly fairer rules and procedures used by the state; changes that would have limited state employee awards to the increase in the cost of living; and a requirement that arbiters balance the economic climate and taxpayers' plans for local spending with the exorbitant demands of the unions.

The sole surviving reform proposal, which would enable the unions to collect their arbitration winnings more quickly, has won the endorsement of several committees.

The arbitration system's multiple flaws have become glaringly apparent this year. With the lingering recession increasing unemployment, with the state raising taxes, reducing municipal aid and still facing a $2.4 billion deficit, and with steep increases anticipated in property taxes in many towns and cities, arbiters have been merrily awarding 5 percent raises to teachers' unions.

Raises "negotiated" under the constant threat of arbitration have been coming in slightly lower, but with "step increases" factored in, even those settlements give some teachers compounded raises as high as 30 percent over three years.

The systemic abuses have reached this point because school board members, superintendents and others involved in public-employee contract talks have done little to promote reform except to bellyache about the system with protestations that would make Baghdad Bob blush.

But actions speak louder than words. Instead of pushing for reform, municipal officials have adopted a cut-their-losses strategy � offering raises well in excess of inflation or of what's justified in hopes that arbiters might accept them. But that tactic only has emboldened unions to aim even higher in their contract demands. The restraint of good-faith collective bargaining that has been built into the system discourages the more reasonable compromises that are achieved routinely in union negotiations with private-sector employers.

Government officials are supposed to represent the people, but arbitration has evolved to leave all parties in the talks sitting on the same side of the table � a phenomenon we call the Confederacy of Greed. As a result, taxpayers for all practical purposes are shut out of the process until the bill comes due.

Arbitration awards set precedents for contracts in other unions, locally and statewide. A 5 percent award to teachers in well-off Cheshire or Darien becomes the standard for raises in Hartford or Bridgeport.

The system places far-reaching power in the hands of non-elected, non-resident arbiters who are accountable to no one, who are unschooled in municipal finance and administration, and who are not even responsible for making awards that are equitable and workable. It can be forcefully argued, then, that compulsory arbitration is an unconstitutional delegation of the legislative authority reserved to taxpayers.

Reform proposals may be dead for this session, but the campaign to fix the system continues. This week, New Britain, a city with a proud history of private-sector unionism, became the fifth municipality � Tolland, East Hartford, Berlin and East Hampton are the others � to adopt a resolution encouraging lawmakers to re-examine binding arbitration.

The resolution is modeled after one crafted by the nonprofit Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations (FCTO), which is being promoted in a number of other towns. "The resolution is intended to have local elected officials take a leadership position in encouraging their state representatives to open the debate on binding arbitration," it states. The goal "is a revision to binding arbitration laws wherein municipal officials, as elected by the taxpayers, have the capability to control their own budgets and personnel costs."

In 1981, the late Coleman Young, then Democratic mayor of Detroit, had this to say about Michigan's police and fire arbitration, which he sponsored while serving in the state Senate in the 1960s: "... (C)ompulsory arbitration has been a failure. Slowly, inexorably, compulsory arbitration destroys sensible fiscal management. Arbitration awards have caused more damage to the public service in Detroit than the strikes they were designed to prevent."

The situation has deteriorated since then. "We have little hope of controlling municipal budgets, until the laws on binding arbitration are changed," FCTO President Susan Kniep said. "Those who depend on the unions to keep them in office are afraid to take the lead to effectuate changes in binding arbitration. ... For this reason, we must do all that we can to stimulate the debate on this issue among state legislators, local elected officials and the public, which is expected to financially support these union contracts when paying their property taxes."

The FCTO resolution provides superintendents, school boards and other public officials with a tangible way to endorse arbitration reform they purport to support. And by adding their voices to the chorus for reform, they might prevail on public-employee-union pandering lawmakers to change their tune.