Does the Thrill of a Pyrrhic Victory Beat the Agony of Defeat?
Indiana House Democrats today notified their Republican counterparts that they were ending what has amounted to the longest walkout in state history. Democrats originally walked out last month over issues concerning “right to work” legislation and what they called anti-union and anti-public schools. In a news release just put out, Democrats said they extracted several concessions including the following…
- Right-to-work legislation is off the table, preserving collective bargaining rights;
- The permanent ban on public employee bargaining is off the table in the House;
- Enabling legislation for private takeover of public schools is off the table in the House;
- Private school vouchers will be limited to 7,500 students in the first year and 15,000 in the second year, rather than the largest voucher program in the nation the Republicans originally wanted;
- Rather than an outright ban of Project Labor Agreements as Republicans wanted, PLAs still can be included with projects passed by public referendum; and
- The threshold for applying the common construction wage to projects would be $250,000 for 2012 and $350,000 for 2013, rather than the job-killing $1 million threshold the Republicans wanted.
While some may call this a victory, a close look at what Democrats received doesn’t really change the dynamics of the legislature. The language regarding project labor agreements has been on the table for the last few weeks. The only real change is the timeline and when it goes into effect. The dollar amounts are phased in over two years as opposed to being implemented in just one year.
In addition, the bills regarding public employee bargaining and the “takeover” over public schools are off the table in the House. It says nothing about whether the bills can come up in the Senate. And the voucher legislation was already set long before the Democrats came back.
So as you can see Democrats are declaring victory, but what did they win?
