doodledee

Back in the fall of 2001, the state negotiated a new contract with a huge number of its employees. It was an ugly process that included a 2-week strike, Jesse sneaking away from a picket line, and lots of finger pointing and general nastiness. In the end, the employees got raises. Wee!

Fast-forward to today - 16+ months later - and note that the Legislature still hasn't ratified the contracts. Then note that there are a couple of new bills cranking through House and Senate committees that seek to wrap up the contract as soon as possible.

So what's with the sudden change in priorities?

Simple: if nothing gets ratified before May 19th, all employees' wages revert to their pre-contract (i.e. pre-raise) levels. That's an effective pay cut. And seeing as new contact negotiations are getting ready to ramp up, somebody - the union - figured it was time to get some closure on the last round.

Ahh, peace at last.

But wait. If all it takes is some Legislative approval, why didn't the new contracts get ratified right away like they should have been?

Again, it's simple: the Legislature at the time - more specifically the House - refused to ratify any contract that included same-sex domestic partner benefits. And who was leading the House back then? That's right folks, Tim Pawlenty.

What's even funnier is that rather than just sitting and not ratifying them, Pawlenty and his doof buddies in the House actually tried to circumvent the rules and ratify what was basically the same contract, only without the domestic partner benefits. It didn't really work, but hey, I guess you can't blame them for tryin'.

At the time, some people danced around the issue. Not Jesse:

"It's very homophobic, in my opinion. People are people, and people deserve to be treated equally."

Ahh, gotta love Jesse.

During last year's gubernatorial race, the Republican's campaigned openly against same-sex benefits. A report from the floor of the GOP convention tells of the Pawlenty crew proudly passing out reprints of a Strib article headlined "Pawlenty leads fight against same-sex benefits". As the night wore on, the candidates even challenged each other as to which one of them was more anti-benefits. (Adorable!)

Then Pawlenty won the election.

Figuring they might lose the raises they fought for, the employees' union has "grudgingly" signed on to the new bill. The Senate version is being offered by John Hottinger, a DFLer. The whole shootin' match is bound to pass.

All this hoopla so a bunch of wankers with 'moral objections' can keep 85 people from getting benefits.

Ahh boo.

And PS: Joe Millionaire was stupid. Put me in the "she'll take the money and run" bucket.