Corbett not as harsh as other governors on workers

In New Jersey, Gov. Christie has turned bashing public-employee unions into political performance art. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker is pushing hard to curb state workers' collective-bargaining rights.

An even tougher anti-union plan is flying through the Ohio legislature. "We're going to save the state, I have no doubt," Gov. John Kasich said Tuesday during his first budget address as thousands of union protesters jeered in the Capitol rotunda in Columbus.

A little more than 300 miles away, in Harrisburg, at about the same hour of the same day, Tom Corbett was striking a more measured tone. He said his administration, facing a $4 billion deficit, would negotiate with state workers, adding, "Each side must understand the need of the other."

Though he was not as fiery as some of his fellow Republican governors and does not seek to end collective bargaining, Corbett, too, is asking for big concessions.

"We will be looking for salary rollbacks and freezes from state employees as well as asking them to increase their contributions for health-care benefits," Corbett said. "We also need to start the conversation about the necessary repairs to our public retirement system."

Public workers have emerged this year as ripe targets, with states facing huge deficits and the nation in a recession. Bbureaucrats, teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public employees often have better retirement and health benefits - and more job security - than their private-sector counterparts.

The nation's new Republican governors have been the most vocal in taking on public worker unions. Not only are employee costs a huge part of state budgets, but those unions are a major part of the Democratic Party's base.

"Of course, this doesn't mean they sought out the crisis, but it is in some ways perfect for them to use the leverage of tough fiscal times to attack these adversarial entities," said Christopher Borick, a political scientist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. "It's naive to think that Republican strategists across the country haven't pointed this out as a good route to take."

Corbett, speaking Wednesday morning after a tour of the new Microsoft Technology Center in Malvern, said critics should take a deep breath.

"Everyone shouldn't overreact to what is the beginning of the budget process," the governor said. "This is a very difficult year. This doesn't necessarily mean it has to be this way from now on. But we have to get our spending under control."

Though the most vocal governors in confronting employee costs have been in the GOP, some Democratic governors are also demanding concessions, including Andrew Cuomo of New York and Jerry Brown of California. Brown wants an immediate cut of 8 percent to 10 percent in take-home pay for state workers.

Corbett pointedly quoted the California Democrat in his Tuesday budget speech: "His own words were: 'We have no choice,' and that California must 'return to fiscal responsibility and get our state on the road to economic recovery and job growth.' It's no different here."

But there is an appreciable difference between Corbett and the other GOP governors now in the spotlight, said Rick Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.

"I think he's more moderate than the rest of them - he's not on some kind of ideological mission," Bloomingdale said. "I think he really believes that he needs to get the state budget under control."

The broader assault on public workers is part of a general "idea that we need to drive wages down to be competitive," the union leader contended. "What's next - comparing us to Mexico? At what point do we say that we don't want to be a poor nation, that we need a middle class?"

Corbett's main argument - that he was elected on a promise to downsize government and not raise taxes - makes sense to Jerry Pisano, 83, of Berwyn. He said the pain of budget cuts is inevitable.

"At some point, the balloon gets so big it has to burst," said Pisano, a former golf pro who works part time as a courier at the Chester County Justice Center. He said he's already seen cutbacks by the county but expects more.

"Nothing is easy," he said shortly after Corbett's morning visit to the county. "But what else can you do? We can't have our kids paying off our debt for their lifetime."

Corbett wants school employees to accept a year of wage freezes; about a dozen full-time Chester County workers interviewed Wednesday said their wages have already been frozen for two years. "What about the department heads who make $80,000 and rarely come to work?" said one employee, insisting on anonymity for fear of retribution.

Derrick Hiestand, 20, of Brodheadsville, Pa., a student at Pennsylvania State University's Abington campus, was among the students who gave Corbett demonstrations of computer applications they had created. Hiestand was not thrilled with the 50 percent cut in higher-education aid proposed in Corbett's budget - a figure Penn State's president says would "fundamentally" change the college.

"I just hope future students have the same opportunities I did," said Hiestand, a senior.

Science instructor Joe Oakes said most of his Abington students cannot afford higher costs. "They're already working part-time jobs in addition to going to class," he said.

As Oakes spoke and Corbett's entourage headed back to Harrisburg, legislators in another capital began considering a measure to roll back public-employee bargaining rights. The proposal in the Iowa House would prohibit state workers from bargaining for health-insurance benefits and layoff protections.

Meanwhile, labor lawyers in New Jersey were lobbying hard against Senate Bill 2178, which would have state workers pay between 12 and 30 percent of their health-insurance premiums. That would "eviscerate collective bargaining," the lawyers wrote to the state senators. The bill was introduced by Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester), himself a labor leader.

Thus far, polls have found that most Americans say they're against efforts to eliminate collective-bargaining rights - 63 percent in a Bloomberg News poll released Wednesday.

While Walker, of Wisconsin, has recently signaled that he might compromise with Democrats, that state's Senate on Wednesday voted to strip public-employee unions of nearly all bargaining rights.

Still, Walker's approval ratings have dropped in state polls, with solid majorities disapproving of his performance. Time will tell whether most Pennsylvanians can live with Corbett's approach.

"These fights can take their toll," Borick said. "The drama has yet to play out in Pennsylvania."