The Privileged Class
Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2011 5:56 pm
Government employees in Wisconsin are rioting in the streets, because the newly-elected government threatens to remove their longstanding “collective bargaining” rights. Sympathetic, outraged journalists look on and report the chaos. Madison teachers call in “sick” in such numbers that classes must be cancelled, and there is a threat of an epidemic of Blue Flu. The Progressives are shocked and horrified!
The governor or New Jersey receives death threats for explaining the State’s fiscal problems to a firefighter at a local Town Hall meeting.
In Pennsylvania, outraged employees of the State’s liquor stores lobby feverishly, write letters to local newspapers, and predict widespread death in the Pennsylvania streets – the inevitable result, they predict, of turning over the running of liquor stores to private entrepreneurs.
As Limbaugh would describe it, “all across the fruited plain,” government employees and their sycophants in the media decry the popular, conservative-led movement to…what?...make the compensation, benefits, and job security of government employment slightly more in line with that of comparable positions in the private sector.
Does anyone dare to say it: Collective bargaining in the public sector has been an unmitigated disaster for the taxpaying public? Not only is it conceptually absurd, but its real-life products (the labor contracts) have grown more and more unreal as time goes by.
On the employee/worker side, you have employees in a monopolistic institution who can threaten to withhold vital services to the public to get what they want – and generally pay no personal price for it (usually, they get backpay for any lost paychecks, and teachers get paid for the full academic year, regardless). On the management/employer side, you have people who are playing with “funny money” that – at least in their own minds - arises from an inexhaustible source, and management negotiators often know that they will reap the rewards of any generous settlement in their own compensation and benefit packages before the ink is dry on the new contract.
Clearly, this is NOT a scenario for which collective bargaining is appropriate: one where both the employees and the employer are negotiating to advance their vital interests, and an ill-considered settlement can threaten the very existence of the enterprise. If the employees go on strike, they lose paychecks and cannot collect unemployment, and the enterprise generally loses its production capacity, potentially antagonizing customers and losing business to competitors.
But inevitably in the public sector, we now have an entire class of state and local government employees (millions strong) who have never had to experience the shift from defined-benefit pension plans to “401k’s” as the private sector did, who never had to start paying substantial portions of their health insurance costs as the private sector does, and who have never had to live with the more-or-less constant concern about job loss, as most private sector employees do. And in recent decades when private sector employees have had to live with “flat” or declining salaries due to minimal inflation, global competition, and strained corporate revenues, public sector employees have continued to experience annual contract-mandated “step increases” and cost-of-living increases, regardless of the economic climate for those not suckling at the public teat.
These are the employees who know that they can call in “sick” so that they have time to stage mass demonstrations to save their money and perks, because they know that their government employers would NEVER have the nerve to question the veracity of their assertion of illness, regardless of proof to the contrary. Try doing that if you work for a private employer. See how long you continue to draw a paycheck after you call in sick, and your hale and hearty face appears at an anti-company demonstration on the 11 o’clock news.
On the margins of this endemic insanity we have a cornucopia of lesser-publicized abuses. We have “management” employees who reap mountains of overtime compensation for the occasional after-hours telephone call. We have firefighters, prison guards, and police who double their compensation through “casual” overtime (employees regularly call in sick to ensure a steady stream of extra shifts). We have managers who conspire with employees to maximize overtime during the last years before retirement, thus mandating inflated pensions calculated on total compensation in the last years of work. We have managers and line employees who get paid at retirement for months of unused sick leave – a practice that is unheard of in the private sector. And the sick leave is paid at the highest rate, even though it was generally accumulated when the employee was making much, much less.
No sane and cogent person can witness these developments and fail to recognize that the situation has become untenable and, in the current vernacular, “unsustainable.” The taxpaying public WILL NOT accept confiscatory taxes in the future to continue to support public employees and retirees whose compensation has far outstripped that of comparable private sector employees (who generally work longer and harder), and who howl like banshees when they are asked to pay a couple dollars a month toward their health insurance, and who retire at age 53 with lifetime health security and generous pensions (and who often come back as highly-compensated “consultants” or employees at other government entities, to suck even more from the inexhaustible government breast).
Unfortunately, we, the taxpayers do not have the time, the organizational support, or the broad-based knowledge of the facts to mount public demonstrations to voice our collective opinions. We must rely on the occasional elected official who has the integrity and honesty to rein in the chronic abuses and virtual theft. And these public servants can only be elected with “super” majorities of support, as the millions of government workers and their dependents – as much as 25% of the electorate in places like NYC – vote in lock-step for the mainly-Democrat enablers who created this mess.
We also rely on the Fourth Estate to put these complaints and demonstrations into proper perspective. Yet it is almost never reported that of the “500 State Employees” who were reported as having lost their jobs six months ago, all but 20 have either retired to a generous and early government pension, or been hired by some other agency of the same government. We always read about the demand by the Government (e.g., school district) that the employees pay more for their health insurance, but never read what large private sector employers are asking of their employees in the same geographical area, for comparison. They report that the School District has agreed to three percent increases in salaries for the years of the contract, but they never mention that the employees also get 3-4% “step increase” (virtually) every year, which makes the actual compensation increase twice what was reported by the unions.
God bless the recent wave of Republican governors and legislators for having the courage to confront this “unsustainable” and massive problem. I hope the voting public takes the time to understand what’s really going on.
The governor or New Jersey receives death threats for explaining the State’s fiscal problems to a firefighter at a local Town Hall meeting.
In Pennsylvania, outraged employees of the State’s liquor stores lobby feverishly, write letters to local newspapers, and predict widespread death in the Pennsylvania streets – the inevitable result, they predict, of turning over the running of liquor stores to private entrepreneurs.
As Limbaugh would describe it, “all across the fruited plain,” government employees and their sycophants in the media decry the popular, conservative-led movement to…what?...make the compensation, benefits, and job security of government employment slightly more in line with that of comparable positions in the private sector.
Does anyone dare to say it: Collective bargaining in the public sector has been an unmitigated disaster for the taxpaying public? Not only is it conceptually absurd, but its real-life products (the labor contracts) have grown more and more unreal as time goes by.
On the employee/worker side, you have employees in a monopolistic institution who can threaten to withhold vital services to the public to get what they want – and generally pay no personal price for it (usually, they get backpay for any lost paychecks, and teachers get paid for the full academic year, regardless). On the management/employer side, you have people who are playing with “funny money” that – at least in their own minds - arises from an inexhaustible source, and management negotiators often know that they will reap the rewards of any generous settlement in their own compensation and benefit packages before the ink is dry on the new contract.
Clearly, this is NOT a scenario for which collective bargaining is appropriate: one where both the employees and the employer are negotiating to advance their vital interests, and an ill-considered settlement can threaten the very existence of the enterprise. If the employees go on strike, they lose paychecks and cannot collect unemployment, and the enterprise generally loses its production capacity, potentially antagonizing customers and losing business to competitors.
But inevitably in the public sector, we now have an entire class of state and local government employees (millions strong) who have never had to experience the shift from defined-benefit pension plans to “401k’s” as the private sector did, who never had to start paying substantial portions of their health insurance costs as the private sector does, and who have never had to live with the more-or-less constant concern about job loss, as most private sector employees do. And in recent decades when private sector employees have had to live with “flat” or declining salaries due to minimal inflation, global competition, and strained corporate revenues, public sector employees have continued to experience annual contract-mandated “step increases” and cost-of-living increases, regardless of the economic climate for those not suckling at the public teat.
These are the employees who know that they can call in “sick” so that they have time to stage mass demonstrations to save their money and perks, because they know that their government employers would NEVER have the nerve to question the veracity of their assertion of illness, regardless of proof to the contrary. Try doing that if you work for a private employer. See how long you continue to draw a paycheck after you call in sick, and your hale and hearty face appears at an anti-company demonstration on the 11 o’clock news.
On the margins of this endemic insanity we have a cornucopia of lesser-publicized abuses. We have “management” employees who reap mountains of overtime compensation for the occasional after-hours telephone call. We have firefighters, prison guards, and police who double their compensation through “casual” overtime (employees regularly call in sick to ensure a steady stream of extra shifts). We have managers who conspire with employees to maximize overtime during the last years before retirement, thus mandating inflated pensions calculated on total compensation in the last years of work. We have managers and line employees who get paid at retirement for months of unused sick leave – a practice that is unheard of in the private sector. And the sick leave is paid at the highest rate, even though it was generally accumulated when the employee was making much, much less.
No sane and cogent person can witness these developments and fail to recognize that the situation has become untenable and, in the current vernacular, “unsustainable.” The taxpaying public WILL NOT accept confiscatory taxes in the future to continue to support public employees and retirees whose compensation has far outstripped that of comparable private sector employees (who generally work longer and harder), and who howl like banshees when they are asked to pay a couple dollars a month toward their health insurance, and who retire at age 53 with lifetime health security and generous pensions (and who often come back as highly-compensated “consultants” or employees at other government entities, to suck even more from the inexhaustible government breast).
Unfortunately, we, the taxpayers do not have the time, the organizational support, or the broad-based knowledge of the facts to mount public demonstrations to voice our collective opinions. We must rely on the occasional elected official who has the integrity and honesty to rein in the chronic abuses and virtual theft. And these public servants can only be elected with “super” majorities of support, as the millions of government workers and their dependents – as much as 25% of the electorate in places like NYC – vote in lock-step for the mainly-Democrat enablers who created this mess.
We also rely on the Fourth Estate to put these complaints and demonstrations into proper perspective. Yet it is almost never reported that of the “500 State Employees” who were reported as having lost their jobs six months ago, all but 20 have either retired to a generous and early government pension, or been hired by some other agency of the same government. We always read about the demand by the Government (e.g., school district) that the employees pay more for their health insurance, but never read what large private sector employers are asking of their employees in the same geographical area, for comparison. They report that the School District has agreed to three percent increases in salaries for the years of the contract, but they never mention that the employees also get 3-4% “step increase” (virtually) every year, which makes the actual compensation increase twice what was reported by the unions.
God bless the recent wave of Republican governors and legislators for having the courage to confront this “unsustainable” and massive problem. I hope the voting public takes the time to understand what’s really going on.