text: You can sell that stuff to people who know nothing about public sector collective bargaining, but to nobody else.   State employees have not in living memory "gave up something" to get something.   The closest they come to giving up something is not getting everything they want.   I started in LR for the State a couple of months after Gov. Cowper said, "all bets are off" and stayed for the whole almost ten year war between the State and the unions.  Even then the unionized employees never made any real concessions.   When we finally got them back under contract they gave back some goodies Gov. Sheffield had given them to try to placate them after the Leg refused to fund the '86 increases.  In dealing with the State's unions, you buy it or you take it, and I never worked for a Governor who had the fortitude to take anything from them.   FM might have, but oil went up and we didn't have to take anything.