Union officials say they have grown weary of Quinn's efforts to rally business leaders behind his ideas and his use of agency directors and state government resources to argue that basic state government functions will suffer unless something is done about pensions.

Gov. Jerry Brown wants California's state government employees to take a 5 percent pay cut to help balance the budget, yet the savings he forecast in his revised budget proposal are far from assured because he must negotiate details of any cuts with dozens of labor unions that have been reluctant to accept wage rollbacks and hold enormous sway with the Democratic lawmakers who control the Legislature.

Gov. Jerry Brown is targeting a new part of the budget to close a widening deficit by seeking to reduce state worker costs in his revised spending plan, according to sources with knowledge of his plans.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel took his case for pension reform directly to rank-and-file members whose contributions he wants to raise and whose retirement benefits he's proposing to cut.

With fewer than two months before the state budget is due, Gov. Chris Christie said he wants the state Legislature to deliver laws changing the tenure system for public school teachers in a way that will result in decreased taxes for New Jersey residents.

Gov. Chris Gregoire's office has started contract negotiations with state employee unions. The result of the talks could tie the hands Washington's next governor for three years.

Gov. Scott Walker said Monday that his policies had saved Wisconsin taxpayers more than $1 billion so far - savings largely achieved by the Republican governor and lawmakers repealing most public workers' union bargaining and effectively lowering their compensation.

Current legislation on labor unions and collective bargaining is available in a searchable database. You can search all collective bargaining or labor union related bills.

Gov. Bill Haslam announced a compromise on civil service reform legislation and also said he plans to add about $28 million in spending to his proposed state budget for the coming year.

The study estimates that the state pays on average $13,972 to provide health benefits for a state employee compared with an average of $11,539 for the five states in the area.

Current legislation on labor unions and collective bargaining is available in a searchable database. You can search all collective bargaining or labor union related bills.

To level the playing field between governmentemployee unions and taxpayers, elimination of dues checkoff and the agency shop are possible steps to take. In fact, these may be more politically palatable, and ultimately more effective, avenues of reform than are restrictions on collective bargaining. Eliminating the public-sector union’s money advantage would let workers retain their right to negotiate with their employers but put them on a level playing field in the political arena. It is the way to restore fairness to the process.

Union affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by state, 2010-2011 annual averages

The issue facing states around the nation is not a traditional private sector dispute between labor and management. It is a question of important public policy and whether states can afford agreements for government employees' salaries and benefits.  The numbers from State Budget Solutions show that the answer is no.

Thanks to union expense reporting requirements and the accessibility of the Internet, we can get a glimpse into the compensation packages of top union officials in Illinois.

One suspects that the vast majority of workers are at least vaguely aware of their right to organize. Nonetheless, the National Labor Relations Board, apparently desperate to drum up business for unions and work for itself, intends to issue new regulations that would force employers to post notices informing workers that they do, indeed, have a right to organize.

A Freedom Foundation of Minnesota review of recently filed campaign finance reports finds that public employee unions in Minnesota have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the 2010 election cycle to support a diverse group of candidates: suburban Democrats, rural Democrats, Twin Cities Democrats, and Iron Range Democrats.

Though unions have been on the decline in nearly every state in the nation, Nebraska's unions are actually growing.

With all that is happening in Wisconsin (and now Ohio and other states) with regard to government workers, some observers are wondering how we arrived to this point.

Why should the Ohio Senate revoke collective bargaining privileges from both state and local government workers, undoing rights created in 1983 by ORC 4117? The existing law starts from the flawed premise that elected officials and their appointees will protect the public interest in bargaining with the unions

Public officials can help alleviate their budget crunches by offering competitive, not exorbitant benefits.

Advocating for collective bargaining reforms because unless base compensation adjustmentst happen, taxes will have to go up.

Ten ideas to cut waste and balance the buget without raising taxes, including more efficient K-12 funding, spending high education tax dollars more wisely and rein in state employee salaries and benefits.

Article presenting the elimination of the Oregon state income tax and the end forced unionism as solutions to both budget problems and lack of business growth.

the Goldwater Institute recommends that Arizona join North Carolina and other states that completely prohibit state and local government officials from contracting with public employee unions, requiring all employment relationships to be individually negotiated.

No area of public policy in Michigan is more in need of fresh thinking than the relationship between government and its employees. With Michigan's recurring government budget struggles, and with a new Legislature and governor espousing a commitment to performance, efficiency and accountability in government, a new labor law for government employees is imperative.

Paper suggesting a variety of ways to fixing state budgets in crisis, including freezing or slowing public employee salary growth, privatizing infrastructure and state operations, eliminating prevailing wage and placing constitutional limits on taxing and spending.

The unions' political triumphs have molded a California in which government workers thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector. The state's public school teachers are the highest-paid in the nation. Its prison guards can easily earn six-figure salaries. State workers routinely retire at 55 with pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life. Meanwhile, what was once the most prosperous state now suffers from an unemployment rate far steeper than the nation's and a flood of firms and jobs escaping high taxes and stifling regulations. This toxic combination-high public-sector employee costs and sagging economic fortunes-has produced recurring budget crises in Sacramento and in virtually every municipality in the state.

The Evergreen Freedom Foundations' ideas to cut waste, balance the budget and stimulate the budget without raising taxes.