Jerry Brown Gives Prison Guards What they Want: Unions Win Major Victory

The Daily Caller reports:

California’s 32,000 prison guards and parole officers — notorious for enjoying political clout wildly exceeding their meager numbers — tried to negotiate a new contract with former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for four years but got nowhere. After just three months of negotiations with Jerry Brown, they got their contract, and hapless Californians got the clearest signal yet that Brown is not going to deal responsibly with the state’s unfunded public employee pension liabilities of as much as $500 billion.

The details of the new California Correctional Police Officers Association contract haven’t yet been made public and haven’t yet been analyzed by people who, unlike me, can tell a POFF from a PLP. (If you’re curious, POFF II contributions are suspended for two years under the new contract and one PLP will be granted every 12 months.) Still, it’s easy to read the net result.

In a letter yesterday to his board of directors, CCPOA executive director Chuck Alexander wrote, “The majority of the rights and protections that exist in our old MOU have been carried forward in this new MOU.”

Any objective California governor would realize the state can’t afford to do that. It’s not like this is a union that needs more coddling. It has grown at a rate of almost 1,000 members a year since its formation in 1980. It has a 70-person staff that includes 20 lawyers. Even that’s apparently not enough, since Brown’s new contract with the union includes even more new positions. You’d think California was a state that’s not in a fiscal crisis.

Can California taxpayers afford even more $100,000 a year prison guards?