Legislature Funds Contracts
Before the legislature went out of session on Nov. 19, it passed a supplemental budget that was $52 million over Gov. Romney's request. This additional amount included funding for the 23 contracts of 13,000 higher education employees.
These contracts were signed, ratified and originally sent to the legislature by Gov. Jane Swift in 2001. After the legislature funded them, Gov. Swift vetoed them. As the state's economy headed into a tailspin, the legislature did not bring them up for an override vote.
The MCCC contract extension was not part of this appropriation because it had not been submitted to the legislature by a governor. It was ratified in 2002 at the end of the Swift administration, and she did not submit it. When Gov. Mitt Romney came in, he said he would not submit the contract to the legislature for funding.
Attempts were made by MCCC lobbyist, and former House Speaker, Charles Flaherty to include the contract extension in the supplemental budget. These efforts did not succeed at this time. With other state employee contracts in the same situation, legislators feared it could start a stampede. But the Union continues to work on options to fund the extension.
The MCCC joined the Higher Education Unions United (HEUU) coalition on the campaign to fund these contracts and did a tremendous job of organizing and lobbying the legislature. The funding bill was passed by an overwhelming majority of both the House and the Senate.
The bill left out any retroactive payments, although promises were made to fund that portion in the next fiscal year. Gov. Romney did not veto the contract portion of the supplemental budget as he did other lines. However, he was quoted in The Boston Globe as saying that this was a one-time payment.
As MCCC President Rick Doud noted during the funding campaign, funding these contracts first is essential for preserving the basic collective bargaining rights of all state employees and is essential to achieving eventual funding for our own contract extension.