It included, predictably, calls for a reduction of the MBTA’s generous benefits package. Nobody on Beacon Hill was ready to take on the challenge, and those proposals vanished quietly into the ether. Not long after, the Carmen’s Union inked its deal with the agency, preserving the pension rules.
Suddenly this spring, however, the state government revived the Commission’s recommendations. As Governor Deval Patrick, Senate President Therese Murray, and House Speaker Sal DiMasi began pushing a huge transportation-bond bill, they floated the idea of attaching a series of reforms that looked very similar to what the MBTA had been failing to win at the bargaining table.
Introduced as Senate amendments, they sought to prohibit the MBTA from signing any bargaining agreement without a 25-year service requirement for pension eligibility. The amendments would also require MBTA retirees under age 65, who now get free health-care coverage, to contribute 15 percent of those costs — as most other state employees do. Other pieces would have changed the process for workers’-compensation and disability-retirement benefits.
The proposals got little attention — drowned beneath the apparently sexier bond provision concerning paid police details — even though the reforms would save the state more than $1 billion over the next 20 years, according to the Commission.
Not surprisingly, the union saw this as an attempt to end-run the labor negotiations. “There’s always going to be this club where the governing body threatens to step in,” says Stephan MacDougall, president of the Carmen’s Union. “We’re faced with negotiation, arbitration, and legislation.”
They were also faced with bad PR. MBTA benefits, which can look mind-bogglingly sweet, are a favorite public whipping boy. Government watchdogs, such as Barbara Anderson of Citizens for Limited Taxation and Michael Widmer of the Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation, chimed in on the need to rein in the T benefits.
And the Boston Herald gave a perfect public face to the issue: Patrick Bulger, son of former Senate president William Bulger.
The younger Bulger, the Herald reported this past month, recently retired from the T at the age of 43, with full pension benefits thanks to his 23 years at the agency. Bulger then took another state job, as a court-services coordinator, where he earns a full salary while also collecting his MBTA pension.
MacDougall and the union put their lobbying muscles to work, and the legislature quickly backed off (as it did with the police details). Some of the amendments were withdrawn. Others, such as the retirement-age requirement, were rewritten to require a study prior to implementation.
The Senate also agreed that any changes would not kick in until 2010 — that is, until the start of the next contract period. That leaves the current contract negotiations unaffected.
But it means that the next round could get extremely ugly. And that means that the upcoming final settlement of this contract might not bring stability to the MBTA budget after all.
