Pawlenty’s Transit Strike (brags in Iowa of breaking transit strike)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/269165/pawlenty-s-transit-strike-katrina-trinko?page=1

June 9, 2011 4:00 A.M.
Pawlenty’s Transit Strike
Facing unsustainable union retirement benefits, Pawlenty chose to fight.

By Katrina Trinko


In 2004, Tim Pawlenty faced a choice: accede to the transit union’s compensation demands or risk igniting a strike that would seriously disrupt commuters’ lives.

Pawlenty chose the strike.

That’s a decision the Minnesota governor has highlighted recently, no doubt hoping to benefit from the same sort of enthusiasm that made Wisconsin governor Scott Walker a Tea Party favorite for his dogged fight to limit public-employee unions’ collective-bargaining powers.

“I took on the public-employee unions before it was popular to do it,” Pawlenty said two weeks ago in his speech in Iowa announcing his candidacy. “On the 45th day of the strike, the union came back to the table, and taxpayers won. Today, we have a transit system that gives commuters a ride, without taking the taxpayers for a ride.”

Peter Bell, a Pawlenty appointee, is chairman of the Metropolitan Council, charged with overseeing public transportation in the Minneapolis–St. Paul metro area. Bell recalls that “the heart of the issue was retiree health-care benefits.” Some workers were eligible for lifetime health-care benefits as soon as they had worked as little as ten years and were 55 or older. Bell, with Pawlenty’s approval, wanted to start requiring those already working for the transit system to be employed for 17 years before they were eligible for any retirement health-care benefits. For new employees, he wanted to eliminate retirement health-care benefits entirely.

Compensation and current health-care benefits were also matters of dispute between the union and the Council. But behind it all was the unfunded liability of $255 million caused by the retiree health-care benefits. “This unfunded liability was really the Pac-Man in our transit budget,” Bell says. “It was going to eat up all our resources.”

FULL 2 page story at link.