I would imagine a lot of the anti-Walker voters in WI are UAW or their friends.
I haven't followed it a lot, but any governor who is actually trying to limit the legal extortion of public unions is ok in my book. Will be interesting to see how it turns out. I suspect we will see a lot of this sort of thing in the years ahead as dire state finances take their toll around the country.
Not related to unions so much, but recall elections are way up the last few years. Walker is the first (of three) governors up for recall to survive, but there's a bunch of other recalls going on. 100 this year, 150 all of 2011. Surprisingly, there's only something like 19 states that allow recalls for governors, and some of them only allow them for malfeasance, not like Wisconsin, where the fight is over policy. (CSMonitor.com)
Looks like Walker is cleaning up in WI. 55% to 44%. The people of Wisconsin are tired of supporting a bunch of over paid public employees. Time to break up Public employee Unions in this country. At least make Right to Work the law in every state. It has been the Federal law since Congress passed the Taft Hartley act in 1947 over Truman's veto. Now if we could just get a legislature to bust up the strangle hold the public employee Unions have on California.
Noticed last night surfing around that the UAW is down near you in Canton MS collecting signatures at the Nissan plant. No word on how well they are doing.
Hey! Watch it with your list... all of your forums host, who I assume you respect & appreciate greatly, are technically "consultants." I'll give you the other two.
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I would hope with the Mandate Walker received yesterday, the Cops and firefighters will be treated equally with the other public employee unions. I truly believe the American people are tired of their servants making a LOT more than the served.
The cops and firefighters get extra nice deals. The public is paying on the order of 25% of salary for retirement and the worker is paying 10% in Ohio. Supposedly that is because of their shortened life span. Most firefighters have their own business they run on their long periods of days off in between working a few days and nights living in the firehouse.
The one thing the pols have done is split the public on this issue: divide and conquer. Most of the public doesn't realize that in certains states they will come after the private unions next after they have punched down the public workers.
The talk show guys use glib generalizations to mix the people with degrees in with the general workers in the public unions--teachers, e.g. So the general public falls for the idea that no one should make more than they do in their job at Walmart, e.g. Sounds like good rhetoric.
We'll have to wait and see if this emboldens other politicians or not.
What annoys me with CA Highway patrol for example. Their base is around $100k per year. Fine it is a dangerous job. However many making $200k plus, have OTHER pay that is more than their base pay. Not counting OT which is another figure. Usually not that much. They 7 weeks vacation a year to start after 3 years it goes up. 90% of their best 3 years retirement.
They also use the lung issue to justify huge firefighters salary. That may have been the case 40 years ago. Now they wear packs for breathing in smoke etc. If everyone in the private sector was knocking down big salaries with gold plated pensions, I could understand. Cities are going broke and letting policeman go instead of cutting pay for all public servants.
Our Union was not able to prevent pay cuts for us 3 times in my career. Why should the public workers skate?
The value of the degree is more important than its simple existence. Those of us not connected to the teaching profession have to deal with that.
Divide and conquer...it's the real "class warfare" at work, just look who has declared war.
The insane pensions and LEO salaries like gagrice mentions are far every bit as bad as the most overpaid paper pushers...but nobody will touch them. I guess it all distracts from the uncontrolled thievery by the executive classes.
I had a neighbor in Boise who was a firefighter (and yeah, I noticed that you used the PC term :shades: ).
One day I asked him if he ever got injured fighting fires or had to go to the hospital. Yeah, he said, been to the hospital 14 (!) times including one longer stay after a roof collapsed on a few guys. This guy was about mid-50s and seemed pretty competent. His wife and kids were into horses so stable duty was his off-duty job.
Don't think I'd much like either of those jobs. Employment behind the computer kills you more slowly.
Back to your comments, here's an op-ed from OnMilwaukee.com:
"When Wisconsin granted public employees collective bargaining rights in 1959, union membership and power were at their peak. Today, the biggest union in the state is not UAW, but WEAC, and relatively few private-sector employees belong to a union. The impressive gains made by public employee unions have been at the expense of taxpayers, not stockholders, and the Republicans have correctly perceived that these unions could be used as a scapegoat for the state's fiscal problems with impunity." (link)
WEAC is the Wisconsin Education Association Council.
The key phrase: at the expense of the tax payer not the stock holder. I don't know all of those that have come to the rescue of the tax payers, but I appreciate what they did both in Wisconsin and San Diego. They have put into law what many voters want. To limit the runaway cost of government. Wisconsin today is financially better off as a result of Scott Walker. If they don't want him we could sure use him in CA, along with the Republican Legislature. This election is a foretaste of November. I would suspect that all the tax and spend bills across CA will get shot down as a result of this current sentiment. We shot down our local school bond issue with 67% against it. In 2008 they conned the voters into a big school bond for a new High School that has been promised for 30 years. They took the money and expanded the richest HS in the district. This time the voters said screw you.
I truly believe the American people are tired of their servants making a LOT more than the served.
Oh, it's even worse than that. In addition to the obscene wages and benes, they have *guaranteed* pensions. And if the pension fund underperforms, the taxpayer gets to pick it up. So given the last 5 years as an example, while regular taxpayers had their own 401K's tanking, they ALSO got saddled with the responsibility to cover the shortfall of the public employee pension systems. A double whammy where the taxpayer bears all the risk while the union members have a great guaranteed benefit with little to no risk.
It must be nice living in the no risk world of Public Employees. Hopefully the voters are fed up and will be moving in the direction of Wisconsin and a couple of cities in CA. The CALPers is under funded which has to make Sacramento nervous. They have to come up with the money to bring it back up to the prescribed level. Of course that is OUR taxes being used for that. My solution is cut all those retirements over $100k back to say $75k per year. Let them downsize like those of US in the private sector.
If they don't want him we could sure use him in CA, along with the Republican Legislature.
Yeah, I would like to have him here in Maryland instead of I-never-saw-a-tax-or-fee I didn't-want-to-increase Martin O'Malley.
I would suspect that all the tax and spend bills across CA will get shot down as a result of this current sentiment. We shot down our local school bond issue with 67% against it.
I read that. And didn't San Jose vote to reduce/limit pensions for public sector workers?
Both San Diego and San Jose passed bills that would limit pension for public employees. Basically any new hires will have a 401K like the rest of the people.
Pension reform advocates emboldened by wins in San Jose, San Diego The advocates expect similar initiatives cutting pension costs to take off across California. Some analysts say Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to rein in state pension obligations may seem like a better deal than tough voter-approved measures.
Yeah, I would like to have him here in Maryland instead of I-never-saw-a-tax-or-fee I didn't-want-to-increase Martin O'Malley.
I remember reading that O'Malley wanted to go after state employee pensions to help close Maryland's budget deficit, and it caused a lot of uproar. I think it involved making them contribute 7% of their pay instead of 5.6%, and upping early retirement from 55 to 60.
I wonder if it ended up passing? Initially I felt bad for them, but the feeling passed quickly. I don't get a pension, yet I'm sure my taxes are being used to help fund theirs. And I'm contributing 25% of my salary into my 401k, so my heart doesn't exactly bleed for someone who suddenly has to fork over an extra 1.4% for their pension.
And, if I manage to retire early, it's because I worked my butt off, sacrificed, delayed gratification, scrimped and saved. If I retire early, it will be because I EARNED it...not because it's in some contract that was written in more optimistic times, and today is helping to bankrupt the state.
The class warfare waged against the general public employee is amazingly hypocritical. The term "public employee" means many different things across the country. In Ohio, the public employees don't get social security. If they do, it is reduced in payment as punishment for having a retirement plan. There are exceptions such as the public employees in WI who paid nothing toward their retirement but that includes social security which they did pay, if I understand correctly. However, the insurance had to be purchased from a particular plan, benefitting the teacher union, in their case.
When the talking heads give examples, they usually give the extreme. Limbaugh is a prime example of this. It's odd they try to use class warfare against the average public employee in this country as they march toward eliminating unions completely. But somehow the talking heads on radio don't ever want to tax or reduce their own high pay and rewards. Yet Limbaugh wants to fly his jet using the public employees and the public monies to build and maintain the airports. I live relatively close to one and haven't flown in decades: why should I subsidize travel for the wealthy?
Gagrice had mentioned that his union handled the retirement plan into which he paid besides SS. I don't recall UAW's status. DO they handle the pension plan?
What about the public employees against which the talking heads rail? Do they own the pension system that was set up? Indeed, the idea of reducing benefits for the highly paid public employees, $100,000 and up, so that they are not linear with the worker bees' retirements is a good idea. On the other hand, there is a difference between a judge or prosecuting attorney with degrees along with teachers like my wife and those with a HS diploma working as a clerk. These same public employees also pay taxes. So the private sector's rant that "I pay their salary" is hollow. The public employees are also paying the social security for the private employees. The public employees also pay their 401K money--all the money in the business comes from the customers. So the self-righteousness of many isn't warranted. But watch for the class envy and hatred from the talking heads who complain about the same class warfare in the poltical scene nationally.
Remember the goal is to do away with UAW and all the other unions, not just the public unions. Now if anyone thinks the savings the businessfolk make from paying less will not be used to give bigger and better retirements, current income, platinum parachutes for the top folks in the companies, I offer that it will work the same as when companies close their plant making garbage disposals in the US of US materials and start making them in China. Are the prices any lower? I just shopped for a replacement for my InSinkErator (Made in USA). The Chinese models seem less in quality, but the price is right up there, including those from GE made in China.
Remember the goal is to get rid of all unions--including the deserving UAW folks with exceptionally high pay historically.
I'd give up my SS for an in-for-25 (or even 30) -out-with-90% system. I wonder how much more I would have to invest than my same wage public sector counterpart to receive the same benefits, and how much longer I would have to work to receive them.
Class warfare, in reality, is the economic and social policies bought and paid for by the top few. Your Chinese example is bang on - offshore it, lower the quality, don't lower price - so those who have stolen so much can increase margins a little more. What I mean by that is we need even more tax cuts for "high earners" and we must be kind to corporations who are people too.
The term "public employee" means many different things across the country.
Absolutely. And if the Public Employees are on a par with the tax payers in a given city or state, I see no reason to target them. You mention no SS. Do they pay in the 12.4% SS premium each month that I was paying in? I also paid in $7 per hour of my wage package for my pension. Yes the Teamsters in AK have a separate Pension Fund which is currently on shaky ground. Which means I could get a letter at any time saying I will get less per month next year than I am now getting. The UAW does not have the auto workers pension plan. It is separate for each automaker. We bailed those out when we bailed out the D2.
The real issue is who negotiates a Union contract. If it is the person paying the price, it is a fair proposition. If it is a state legislature or city council that have no real stake in the cost, it is WRONG. I think we should look at two strong labor people that both felt Public employee unions were wrong. I think they have done more to hurt all unions than they have done to help.
“It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”
That wasn’t Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul, or Ronald Reagan talking. That was George Meany -- the former president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O -- in 1955. Government unions are unremarkable today, but the labor movement once thought the idea absurd.
The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this “unthinkable and intolerable.”
Government collective bargaining means voters do not have the final say on public policy. Instead their elected representatives must negotiate spending and policy decisions with unions. That is not exactly democratic – a fact that unions once recognized.
George Meany was not alone. Up through the 1950s, unions widely agreed that collective bargaining had no place in government. But starting with Wisconsin in 1959, states began to allow collective bargaining in government.
It is only fitting the Wisconsin be the state that says enough is enough to public employee unions. Time to end their reign of terror.
I remember reading that O'Malley wanted to go after state employee pensions to help close Maryland's budget deficit, and it caused a lot of uproar. I think it involved making them contribute 7% of their pay instead of 5.6%, and upping early retirement from 55 to 60.
I wonder if it ended up passing?
To his credit, he did manage to pass the increase to 7% in pension contributions in last year's legislative session. The legislature also reduced the COLA cap from 3% to 1%, unless the pension plan's returns meet a target of 7.75%. The retirement age increased, but only for new workers. The multiplier for calculating benefits also was reduced from 1.8% to 1.5%, but again only for new workers.
I understand the concerns and issues with pensions, even though a good chunk of the problem is that just like social security, the gov didn't invest the employee contributions, nor always pay their obligations to it. But where is the outrage with the fleecing that corporate CEO's are giving? They leverage the hell out of their companies to max their bonuses, then bail on the weakened ship. On top of that, Congress gives them so many tax loopholes and advantages (perhaps in exchange for lobbyist payola) that many pay a far lower tax rate than the average working middle class.
You pretty well answered your own question. CONGRESS writes the rules for taxing the rich. And they are owned by the rich. It has been that way for at least 75 years or more. Old Joe Kennedy wrote the book on hiding your fortune from the Feds. So FDR made him the first director of the SEC. That way he could set up the tax loopholes for all the rich folks to follow. We have proven beyond any doubt that no matter which party is in control that will not change. So we are trying to cut our taxes on the local level. When your city & state pays obscene salaries and retirement benefits to public employees, you try to vote in people that will address those issues. No one wants to live in a city that is going bankrupt, as so many are today.
My second question is what did some of these people actually do? Degrees for the job? AND how much did they make when they were working? My God these are high. One makes more in a month than my wife receives in a year as retirement. And she paid in 10% all along while SS folks paid in less than 6 and now 6% (except when votes are to be bought by lowering it to 4%).
But then the President of OSU makes a million or so and another 800K IIRC. The football coach receives an enormous salary to wit $4 mill/yr: I don't hear complaining about the Buckeye's Football program pay scale. Is there a double standard here?
Paying college coaches more than any other personnel is insanity. From much that came out in the Penn State debacle, Football is actually a BIG money loser for the schools. It is a myth that it generates enough to pay for itself. College coaches don't need no stinking Union.
"Athletics has gotten so disproportionate to the rest of the economy, and to the academic community, that it is unbelievable," says Julian Spallholz, a professor in the department of food and nutrition at Texas Tech, where coach Tommy Tuberville got a $550,000 raise. "This kind of disproportion in the country is why people are occupying Wall Street."
It is common for schools to say that coach pay is pooled largely from TV, media and marketing contracts. But in 2010, only about 20% of FBS athletics departments were able to pay all their bills without help from university or state funds or student fees, according to a USA TODAY analysis of universities' financial records.
For all of the TV money that flows to athletics departments in the best-known conferences, only 22 athletics departments are self-supporting, according to the USA TODAY analysis. The majority get subsidies from the university, often through student fees.
"The students pay more tuition, the faculty pay by not having a pay increase, and the football coach gets a half-million-dollar raise," Spallholz says. "And this goes on in a lot of other places, not just here.
"I think it speaks for itself, doesn't it? It says football is much more important on a lot of campuses than academics."
Are public sector workers somehow entitled to more gold if they simply have a degree?
The American university system is as much of a profit factory for student loan lenders and well connected administrators/coaches as it is for anything related to education. It also serves as a developmental league for several pro sports. Yet another union that hasn't really been touched. When you have retired school employees raking in 6 figure pensions, something is broken and needs to be thrown into the fire and rebuilt.
I read that. And didn't San Jose vote to reduce/limit pensions for public sector workers?
Thank God for San Jose and San Diego votes to limit pensions. Even the gullible voters have lost their patience after what they've suffered through over the last 5 years. The greedy unions are finally getting their comeuppance. I predict this will be a big trend for the next decade - the public employees haircuts.
You said this like 3 times. Who, exactly, said we should get rid of all unions?
I'm not anti-union per se, and unions certainly have provided a lot of benefits in this country. What I don't like is imbalance and unsustainability. That doesn't help anybody in the long run. For companies like GM with the UAW, the UAW greed contributed substantially to the BK. But then of course we ended up owning that company, so it was socialized and we got to help fund it.
For the public unions, I'm sure there are some that have proportionately reasonable benefits and retirements. But an awful lot don't. Take teachers in LA city - impossible to fire - check - almost guaranteed employment for life - check - high pay - check - 3 months off per year - check - pension around 70% of pre-retirement pay - check - health care in retirement - check
And there are not the normal public company checks and balances. Nobody in the public sector gets those kinds of conditions. The unions fund the politicians and the politicians ok the compensation agreements. And the can is kicked further down the road.
Until something collapses, which is where we find ourselves today.
The real problems is not unions in general, but those representing public sector workers.
If the D2 negotiate a contract with the UAW that I don't think is reasonable, I don't have to support that largess with my pocketbook. I can by a car made with non-UAW labor (Honda, Toyota, BMW) in this country, or buy a car that was made in Mexico.
I do not have that choice when agreements with public sector unions result in higher taxes coming out of my pocket. The basic issue, as I think someone else might have mentioned, is that the taxpayers really are not represented at the negotiating table with public workers.
The UAW union operation is different but the pols like Limbaugh still want to get rid of it. The members and others represent a threat to the high dollar people owning companies and making money as CEOs and owners int his country. Paying a UAW member with seniority $30 per hour takes money from the pockets of people like the Kochs and Limbaugh who own the companies. Add this to the idea of free trade where the jobs can be oversourced and the huge cut is costs can become profit to the company stockholders, but more so to the owners, there's money to be made in killing unions here and lowering wages of the worker bees. All that savings can go into the pockets of the priviledged, the 1%, without even having to setup company operations in China and the other countries where most of our products are sourced now.
Have Nike shoes come down in price? Are Apple products cheaper with their China operation--note the protest strike yesterday in Apple's plant in China. Has Ford reduced the Fusion price since it's made in Mexico with cheap labor? Or are these executives still sitting with multimillion dollar incomes, benefits, stock purchase agreements, golden parachutes?
My big problem with the UAW is that the seniority workers lost nothing with the cutbacks. They did not take pay or benefit reductions. Instead cost savings came in paying the new workers hired a pittance compared to their elbow cousins on the line making huge salaries as skilled but non-degreed workers.
The senior workers should have taken salary haircuts. The union should have been trimmed in power by BO when he gave away the money and cheated the bondholders of GM. They could have paid new employees and callbacks a better wage. They could have reduced the price of cars some and sold more and/or put more content into said cars.
But the goal of the republicans in the Carl Rove end of the party is to eliminate the politcal power and financial power of the unions, UAW included. After what the UAW did to the IUE members at the Moraine Truck Assembly plant in their agreement with their bud in the White House, I think the UAW deserves it.
I think public sector compensation packages is kind of a local thing. For example, some teachers as you point out make very large salaries with outsized benefits, some make far less, while some have very wide spreads between teacher salaries. Some teachers are unionized and strike, some are not. You really have to llook at the entire compensation package involved. I seem to recall years back in college that government had a reputation for lousy pay, but some grads took the job for benefits like vacation time versus the private sector, but I know they never seemed to attract students in areas like engineering or accounting.
I think there may be a more important issue here though. Governments at every level seem to never budget or invest for these future liabilities, even though they ride corporations on pension funding levels. It was pay as you go and lo and behold, we hit a bad patch in the economy and they are short monies! Government and politicians should be held accountable for these shortfalls that their financial approaches screwed up, just like a corporate treasuer would be. If governments had invested the employee contributions, and paid out and invested their portion as well, this situation wouldn't now be the time bomb it is. Just wait a bit, because social security is next since Congress and presidents did some of this same crap.
The UAW situation you point to seems to me to really be the result of the politics played out in the GM and C BK. Very bad business decisions in exchange for politics, and potentially very bad precedence as well. The US is a pendulum. Right now corporate power and management are in the high spot. When the economy turns around, and while that may take awhile I believe it will, labor will start moving up again. Job turnover will increase, salary packages will go up and labor unions will gain some strength. People argue that the global economy will preclude this, but it's going to happen in places like China and India too, just probably more bloody.
You can't take Rush seriously really (even though some do). Growing divides between haves and have nots almost always end up ugly - particularly for the haves. Either birthrate or immigration will have to go up or we become like Japan (and so does China by the way!). I don't think most wealthy hold him in high esteem because success usually takes some thought and long term thinking, not soundbites shot from the hip. The trick is not the black and whites, but navigating the greys. As for Karl Rove, he's a professional political pundit - both parties have them.
Two firefighters recently died in Philadelphia when an the wall of an old hosiery mill owned by a bunch of wealthy real estate speculators collapsed on top of them. These scumbags owe the city over $350K in back taxes and have an army of lawyers fighting the city over it. Funny how they have tons of money for lawyers, but none to fix or demolish their decrepit properties or pay their fair share of property taxes.
I have a friend who works in land use planning. He has worked both private and public sector. He prefers the latter, for as he puts it, 90% of the salary, 70% of the work, 150% of the benefits.
Regarding China and India - future bloodshed for sure - especially in the former, but I don't know how far the pendulum will swing in such places. The corrupt Chinese elite aren't going to give up their ill gotten gold (if anything they will just buy their way in here and elsewhere), and a harshly defined class system might prevent a full scale revolution in the latter.
No rainmaking required for the government land use planners. Out in the private sector, those guys spend way too much of their time trying to drum up business, and then when they get an assignment, they have to spend way too many evenings at P&Z meetings trying to get the permits and variances. Of course the public sector guys wind up attending those night meetings too.
Up north, CAW union officials are getting pressure to scale back demands. Spillover effect from the Midwest?
His private sector work usually had to deal with arranging zoning issues for the planned mansions of local oligarchs.
Now he works in the south, county government. Everything is pretty much rubber stamp. Want a supermax prison next door to a daycare next door to a rendering plant? Approved! :shades:
I think there may be a more important issue here though. Governments at every level seem to never budget or invest for these future liabilities, even though they ride corporations on pension funding levels. It was pay as you go and lo and behold, we hit a bad patch in the economy and they are short monies! Government and politicians should be held accountable for these shortfalls that their financial approaches screwed up, just like a corporate treasuer would be. If governments had invested the employee contributions, and paid out and invested their portion as well, this situation wouldn't now be the time bomb it is. Just wait a bit, because social security is next since Congress and presidents did some of this same crap.
Very well said. I always thought pensions were supposed to be covered by investments paid in at the time the staff were working. It seems that pension underfunding is endemic. Time to adjust some of the calculations to reality - just as is being done for Social Security.
Here in NJ in the late 90s we had a pension system that was set up to run forever on its own. Then Christie Whitman raided the pension fund (illegally) to pay for her tax cuts. That money was supposed to be off limits but so it goes. She then gave the existing retirees a big (10%) raise to shut them up.
After that she stopped paying in the state's share of the pension fund (it's supposed to be equal payments of the employee and employer - my employer, the county - has never missed a payment; the state of NJ has missed at least ten years' worth!).
As a last shot she moved (again, against the rules) some of the pension fun into the stock market just before the dotcom bubble burst.
Those of us that played by the rules and had our employer play by the rules still got shafted. Pension contribution went up for us and now that I'm collecting the cost of living increases have been eliminated until they fix things. I'm not holding my breath.
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Now union members are deserting Obama June 12, 2012 -- 12:18 PM
Two new and disturbing polls just out suggest that the road to reelection is getting tougher for President Obama.
In the most significant, Gallup found that union member support for the president is weaker than it was on Election Day. While Obama took 67 of the union vote, according to 2008 election night polling by Peter Hart for the AFL-CIO, Gallup discovered that just 58 percent of union members back the president now. Some 35 percent support Mitt Romney, 5 percent more than Sen. John McCain won in 2008.
"The United Auto Workers is stepping up its effort to organize Nissan Motor Co., taking the unusual step of playing workers at the company's factory in Canton, Miss., against their higher-paid counterparts at the company's plant in Smyrna, Tenn.
But convincing workers at companies like Nissan to sign up has proved a real challenge.
"The way the Japanese have managed their workers, there's no demonstrable advantage for those people to join the union," said Warren Browne, vice president of strategy for AutomotiveCompass LLC." UAW steps up organizing effort at Nissan (Detroit News)
The first thing the UAW would do if certified would be to go on strike. And they would lose at least half the people crossing the picket lines. The UAW is struggling to stay alive and will try anything to get more people paying into the coffers. I would imagine they lost a lot of members when Indiana went Right to Work. Even Rocky is bad mouthing the UAW leadership for backing KORUS with Obama.
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I haven't followed it a lot, but any governor who is actually trying to limit the legal extortion of public unions is ok in my book. Will be interesting to see how it turns out. I suspect we will see a lot of this sort of thing in the years ahead as dire state finances take their toll around the country.
No UAW statements yet that I've spotted.
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The cops and firefighters get extra nice deals. The public is paying on the order of 25% of salary for retirement and the worker is paying 10% in Ohio. Supposedly that is because of their shortened life span. Most firefighters have their own business they run on their long periods of days off in between working a few days and nights living in the firehouse.
The one thing the pols have done is split the public on this issue: divide and conquer. Most of the public doesn't realize that in certains states they will come after the private unions next after they have punched down the public workers.
The talk show guys use glib generalizations to mix the people with degrees in with the general workers in the public unions--teachers, e.g. So the general public falls for the idea that no one should make more than they do in their job at Walmart, e.g. Sounds like good rhetoric.
We'll have to wait and see if this emboldens other politicians or not.
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They also use the lung issue to justify huge firefighters salary. That may have been the case 40 years ago. Now they wear packs for breathing in smoke etc. If everyone in the private sector was knocking down big salaries with gold plated pensions, I could understand. Cities are going broke and letting policeman go instead of cutting pay for all public servants.
Our Union was not able to prevent pay cuts for us 3 times in my career. Why should the public workers skate?
Divide and conquer...it's the real "class warfare" at work, just look who has declared war.
The insane pensions and LEO salaries like gagrice mentions are far every bit as bad as the most overpaid paper pushers...but nobody will touch them. I guess it all distracts from the uncontrolled thievery by the executive classes.
One day I asked him if he ever got injured fighting fires or had to go to the hospital. Yeah, he said, been to the hospital 14 (!) times including one longer stay after a roof collapsed on a few guys. This guy was about mid-50s and seemed pretty competent. His wife and kids were into horses so stable duty was his off-duty job.
Don't think I'd much like either of those jobs. Employment behind the computer kills you more slowly.
Back to your comments, here's an op-ed from OnMilwaukee.com:
"When Wisconsin granted public employees collective bargaining rights in 1959, union membership and power were at their peak. Today, the biggest union in the state is not UAW, but WEAC, and relatively few private-sector employees belong to a union. The impressive gains made by public employee unions have been at the expense of taxpayers, not stockholders, and the Republicans have correctly perceived that these unions could be used as a scapegoat for the state's fiscal problems with impunity." (link)
WEAC is the Wisconsin Education Association Council.
Oh, it's even worse than that. In addition to the obscene wages and benes, they have *guaranteed* pensions. And if the pension fund underperforms, the taxpayer gets to pick it up. So given the last 5 years as an example, while regular taxpayers had their own 401K's tanking, they ALSO got saddled with the responsibility to cover the shortfall of the public employee pension systems. A double whammy where the taxpayer bears all the risk while the union members have a great guaranteed benefit with little to no risk.
Yeah, I would like to have him here in Maryland instead of I-never-saw-a-tax-or-fee I didn't-want-to-increase Martin O'Malley.
I would suspect that all the tax and spend bills across CA will get shot down as a result of this current sentiment. We shot down our local school bond issue with 67% against it.
I read that. And didn't San Jose vote to reduce/limit pensions for public sector workers?
Pension reform advocates emboldened by wins in San Jose, San Diego
The advocates expect similar initiatives cutting pension costs to take off across California. Some analysts say Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to rein in state pension obligations may seem like a better deal than tough voter-approved measures.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pensions-20120607,0,1095595.story
I remember reading that O'Malley wanted to go after state employee pensions to help close Maryland's budget deficit, and it caused a lot of uproar. I think it involved making them contribute 7% of their pay instead of 5.6%, and upping early retirement from 55 to 60.
I wonder if it ended up passing? Initially I felt bad for them, but the feeling passed quickly. I don't get a pension, yet I'm sure my taxes are being used to help fund theirs. And I'm contributing 25% of my salary into my 401k, so my heart doesn't exactly bleed for someone who suddenly has to fork over an extra 1.4% for their pension.
And, if I manage to retire early, it's because I worked my butt off, sacrificed, delayed gratification, scrimped and saved. If I retire early, it will be because I EARNED it...not because it's in some contract that was written in more optimistic times, and today is helping to bankrupt the state.
When the talking heads give examples, they usually give the extreme. Limbaugh is a prime example of this. It's odd they try to use class warfare against the average public employee in this country as they march toward eliminating unions completely. But somehow the talking heads on radio don't ever want to tax or reduce their own high pay and rewards. Yet Limbaugh wants to fly his jet using the public employees and the public monies to build and maintain the airports. I live relatively close to one and haven't flown in decades: why should I subsidize travel for the wealthy?
Gagrice had mentioned that his union handled the retirement plan into which he paid besides SS. I don't recall UAW's status. DO they handle the pension plan?
What about the public employees against which the talking heads rail? Do they own the pension system that was set up? Indeed, the idea of reducing benefits for the highly paid public employees, $100,000 and up, so that they are not linear with the worker bees' retirements is a good idea. On the other hand, there is a difference between a judge or prosecuting attorney with degrees along with teachers like my wife and those with a HS diploma working as a clerk. These same public employees also pay taxes. So the private sector's rant that "I pay their salary" is hollow. The public employees are also paying the social security for the private employees. The public employees also pay their 401K money--all the money in the business comes from the customers. So the self-righteousness of many isn't warranted. But watch for the class envy and hatred from the talking heads who complain about the same class warfare in the poltical scene nationally.
Remember the goal is to do away with UAW and all the other unions, not just the public unions. Now if anyone thinks the savings the businessfolk make from paying less will not be used to give bigger and better retirements, current income, platinum parachutes for the top folks in the companies, I offer that it will work the same as when companies close their plant making garbage disposals in the US of US materials and start making them in China. Are the prices any lower? I just shopped for a replacement for my InSinkErator (Made in USA). The Chinese models seem less in quality, but the price is right up there, including those from GE made in China.
Remember the goal is to get rid of all unions--including the deserving UAW folks with exceptionally high pay historically.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Class warfare, in reality, is the economic and social policies bought and paid for by the top few. Your Chinese example is bang on - offshore it, lower the quality, don't lower price - so those who have stolen so much can increase margins a little more. What I mean by that is we need even more tax cuts for "high earners" and we must be kind to corporations who are people too.
Absolutely. And if the Public Employees are on a par with the tax payers in a given city or state, I see no reason to target them. You mention no SS. Do they pay in the 12.4% SS premium each month that I was paying in? I also paid in $7 per hour of my wage package for my pension. Yes the Teamsters in AK have a separate Pension Fund which is currently on shaky ground. Which means I could get a letter at any time saying I will get less per month next year than I am now getting. The UAW does not have the auto workers pension plan. It is separate for each automaker. We bailed those out when we bailed out the D2.
The real issue is who negotiates a Union contract. If it is the person paying the price, it is a fair proposition. If it is a state legislature or city council that have no real stake in the cost, it is WRONG. I think we should look at two strong labor people that both felt Public employee unions were wrong. I think they have done more to hurt all unions than they have done to help.
“It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”
That wasn’t Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul, or Ronald Reagan talking. That was George Meany -- the former president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O -- in 1955. Government unions are unremarkable today, but the labor movement once thought the idea absurd.
The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this “unthinkable and intolerable.”
Government collective bargaining means voters do not have the final say on public policy. Instead their elected representatives must negotiate spending and policy decisions with unions. That is not exactly democratic – a fact that unions once recognized.
George Meany was not alone. Up through the 1950s, unions widely agreed that collective bargaining had no place in government. But starting with Wisconsin in 1959, states began to allow collective bargaining in government.
It is only fitting the Wisconsin be the state that says enough is enough to public employee unions. Time to end their reign of terror.
I wonder if it ended up passing?
To his credit, he did manage to pass the increase to 7% in pension contributions in last year's legislative session. The legislature also reduced the COLA cap from 3% to 1%, unless the pension plan's returns meet a target of 7.75%. The retirement age increased, but only for new workers. The multiplier for calculating benefits also was reduced from 1.8% to 1.5%, but again only for new workers.
http://database.californiapensionreform.com/database.asp?vttable=calpers
My second question is what did some of these people actually do? Degrees for the job? AND how much did they make when they were working? My God these are high. One makes more in a month than my wife receives in a year as retirement. And she paid in 10% all along while SS folks paid in less than 6 and now 6% (except when votes are to be bought by lowering it to 4%).
But then the President of OSU makes a million or so and another 800K IIRC. The football coach receives an enormous salary to wit $4 mill/yr: I don't hear complaining about the Buckeye's Football program pay scale. Is there a double standard here?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Hm, guess the farm workers would be a better union, since the NCAA crowd is the "free" farm team system for the pros (free for the players that is).
"Athletics has gotten so disproportionate to the rest of the economy, and to the academic community, that it is unbelievable," says Julian Spallholz, a professor in the department of food and nutrition at Texas Tech, where coach Tommy Tuberville got a $550,000 raise. "This kind of disproportion in the country is why people are occupying Wall Street."
It is common for schools to say that coach pay is pooled largely from TV, media and marketing contracts. But in 2010, only about 20% of FBS athletics departments were able to pay all their bills without help from university or state funds or student fees, according to a USA TODAY analysis of universities' financial records.
For all of the TV money that flows to athletics departments in the best-known conferences, only 22 athletics departments are self-supporting, according to the USA TODAY analysis. The majority get subsidies from the university, often through student fees.
"The students pay more tuition, the faculty pay by not having a pay increase, and the football coach gets a half-million-dollar raise," Spallholz says. "And this goes on in a lot of other places, not just here.
"I think it speaks for itself, doesn't it? It says football is much more important on a lot of campuses than academics."
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/story/2011-11-17/cover-college-f- ootball-coaches-salaries-rise/51242232/1
The American university system is as much of a profit factory for student loan lenders and well connected administrators/coaches as it is for anything related to education. It also serves as a developmental league for several pro sports. Yet another union that hasn't really been touched. When you have retired school employees raking in 6 figure pensions, something is broken and needs to be thrown into the fire and rebuilt.
Thank God for San Jose and San Diego votes to limit pensions. Even the gullible voters have lost their patience after what they've suffered through over the last 5 years. The greedy unions are finally getting their comeuppance. I predict this will be a big trend for the next decade - the public employees haircuts.
You said this like 3 times. Who, exactly, said we should get rid of all unions?
I'm not anti-union per se, and unions certainly have provided a lot of benefits in this country. What I don't like is imbalance and unsustainability. That doesn't help anybody in the long run. For companies like GM with the UAW, the UAW greed contributed substantially to the BK. But then of course we ended up owning that company, so it was socialized and we got to help fund it.
For the public unions, I'm sure there are some that have proportionately reasonable benefits and retirements. But an awful lot don't. Take teachers in LA city
- impossible to fire - check
- almost guaranteed employment for life - check
- high pay - check
- 3 months off per year - check
- pension around 70% of pre-retirement pay - check
- health care in retirement - check
And there are not the normal public company checks and balances. Nobody in the public sector gets those kinds of conditions. The unions fund the politicians and the politicians ok the compensation agreements. And the can is kicked further down the road.
Until something collapses, which is where we find ourselves today.
If the D2 negotiate a contract with the UAW that I don't think is reasonable, I don't have to support that largess with my pocketbook. I can by a car made with non-UAW labor (Honda, Toyota, BMW) in this country, or buy a car that was made in Mexico.
I do not have that choice when agreements with public sector unions result in higher taxes coming out of my pocket. The basic issue, as I think someone else might have mentioned, is that the taxpayers really are not represented at the negotiating table with public workers.
Have Nike shoes come down in price? Are Apple products cheaper with their China operation--note the protest strike yesterday in Apple's plant in China. Has Ford reduced the Fusion price since it's made in Mexico with cheap labor? Or are these executives still sitting with multimillion dollar incomes, benefits, stock purchase agreements, golden parachutes?
My big problem with the UAW is that the seniority workers lost nothing with the cutbacks. They did not take pay or benefit reductions. Instead cost savings came in paying the new workers hired a pittance compared to their elbow cousins on the line making huge salaries as skilled but non-degreed workers.
The senior workers should have taken salary haircuts. The union should have been trimmed in power by BO when he gave away the money and cheated the bondholders of GM. They could have paid new employees and callbacks a better wage. They could have reduced the price of cars some and sold more and/or put more content into said cars.
But the goal of the republicans in the Carl Rove end of the party is to eliminate the politcal power and financial power of the unions, UAW included. After what the UAW did to the IUE members at the Moraine Truck Assembly plant in their agreement with their bud in the White House, I think the UAW deserves it.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
I think there may be a more important issue here though. Governments at every level seem to never budget or invest for these future liabilities, even though they ride corporations on pension funding levels. It was pay as you go and lo and behold, we hit a bad patch in the economy and they are short monies! Government and politicians should be held accountable for these shortfalls that their financial approaches screwed up, just like a corporate treasuer would be. If governments had invested the employee contributions, and paid out and invested their portion as well, this situation wouldn't now be the time bomb it is. Just wait a bit, because social security is next since Congress and presidents did some of this same crap.
You can't take Rush seriously really (even though some do). Growing divides between haves and have nots almost always end up ugly - particularly for the haves. Either birthrate or immigration will have to go up or we become like Japan (and so does China by the way!). I don't think most wealthy hold him in high esteem because success usually takes some thought and long term thinking, not soundbites shot from the hip. The trick is not the black and whites, but navigating the greys. As for Karl Rove, he's a professional political pundit - both parties have them.
Regarding China and India - future bloodshed for sure - especially in the former, but I don't know how far the pendulum will swing in such places. The corrupt Chinese elite aren't going to give up their ill gotten gold (if anything they will just buy their way in here and elsewhere), and a harshly defined class system might prevent a full scale revolution in the latter.
Up north, CAW union officials are getting pressure to scale back demands. Spillover effect from the Midwest?
Back off wage, benefit demands, union told (Windsor Star)
Now he works in the south, county government. Everything is pretty much rubber stamp. Want a supermax prison next door to a daycare next door to a rendering plant? Approved! :shades:
My wife wanted to buy a "cabin" lot when we left Alaska (mostly as a ruse to get me back up there I think).
We tracked the subdivision for a few years and they wound up putting in a gravel pit next door.
Then again, I could have hired some union members and mined our lot.
Very well said. I always thought pensions were supposed to be covered by investments paid in at the time the staff were working. It seems that pension underfunding is endemic. Time to adjust some of the calculations to reality - just as is being done for Social Security.
Here in NJ in the late 90s we had a pension system that was set up to run forever on its own. Then Christie Whitman raided the pension fund (illegally) to pay for her tax cuts. That money was supposed to be off limits but so it goes. She then gave the existing retirees a big (10%) raise to shut them up.
After that she stopped paying in the state's share of the pension fund (it's supposed to be equal payments of the employee and employer - my employer, the county - has never missed a payment; the state of NJ has missed at least ten years' worth!).
As a last shot she moved (again, against the rules) some of the pension fun into the stock market just before the dotcom bubble burst.
Those of us that played by the rules and had our employer play by the rules still got shafted. Pension contribution went up for us and now that I'm collecting the cost of living increases have been eliminated until they fix things. I'm not holding my breath.
June 12, 2012 -- 12:18 PM
Two new and disturbing polls just out suggest that the road to reelection is getting tougher for President Obama.
In the most significant, Gallup found that union member support for the president is weaker than it was on Election Day. While Obama took 67 of the union vote, according to 2008 election night polling by Peter Hart for the AFL-CIO, Gallup discovered that just 58 percent of union members back the president now. Some 35 percent support Mitt Romney, 5 percent more than Sen. John McCain won in 2008.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/washington-secrets/2012/06/now-union-memb- ers-are-deserting-obama/721241
But convincing workers at companies like Nissan to sign up has proved a real challenge.
"The way the Japanese have managed their workers, there's no demonstrable advantage for those people to join the union," said Warren Browne, vice president of strategy for AutomotiveCompass LLC."
UAW steps up organizing effort at Nissan (Detroit News)