Mass unions cave on healthcare negotiations

[arendt]

Looks like the Dem stab-in-the-back is working.

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Massachusetts labor leaders have given up their full-throated battle to protect certain collective bargaining rights amid an increasing likelihood that the Legislature will empower local governments to raise the health insurance costs of teachers, firefighters, and other municipal employees.

But now, as the Senate prepares to debate its bill, unions have issued a conciliatory press release, and tried to put a positive spin on the developments.

The changed tactics reflect shifting political ground and a tacit acknowledgement that their earlier hardball tactics did not work in an economy that has hit city and town budgets hard.

Several union-friendly senators have filed amendments in advance of this week’s debate, but appear to be aiming merely to tweak the bill at the margins, rather than kill it. There is little sense they are mounting the kind of sustained fight that characterized the House debate last month, when nearly a third of the chamber’s members faced off against Speaker Robert A. DeLeo and signed onto a union-backed effort to rewrite the measure.

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http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/05/25/mass_unions_soften_approach_on_health_care/?page=full