Uh, while the contract has yet to be signed, the salary and health care for the union has been negotiated and approved. It’s a little late to “stand up to the state worker’s union.” As a matter of fact, there is no pay increase for the union members this July and there were other concessions by the union to help the states budget woes. I’m not a union member for the Commonwealth but state worker’s salaries are not the biggest waste of taxpayer money in PA. Trust me on this. (Everyone just loves to bust on the Commonwealth employees but they are far from the problem with the budget.)
And if Bill Lawrence REALLY believes that the state workers are the TRUE constituents of the legislature, he is an idiot.
Can you give more info - what is the problem area?
My view is that it's public education. Administrative salaries are obscene, you can't fire bad teachers, featherbedding is rampant and educrats always seem to be getting 3 and 4 percent annual raises on top of their automatic step raises.
Granted most of those in public education don't get their paychecks directly from the state -- although those in the state universities do and some of those professors are making $200,000-plus -- but the state gives a lot of subsidies to the local districts, and those subsides would be drastically less if the state made certain changes in the law such as ending prevailing wage and giving districts the power to fire striking teachers along with the right not to renew individual contracts.