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Jewish World Review May 12, 2010/ 28 Iyar 5770 Union Audacity: Yes We Will! By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"We deserve what we have! And we're not giving any of it back!"--Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) Executive Vice President Mary Sullivan, protesting a plan to furlough 100,000 New State public sector state employees.
Sorry, Ms. Sullivan. The furloughs were enacted by the New York state legislature early Tuesday morning for the simplest of reasons: the alternative choice for a highly reluctant legislature was a complete government shutdown. Why a shutdown? Because the same bunch of political hacks have failed to reach a budget agreement, even though the law requires one by April 1st. The state, facing a $9 billion dollar budget gap, had asked the unions for $250 million in contract concessions. The unions refused to budge, no doubt figuring the combination of a union-beholden legislature and lame-duck governor David Patterson wouldn't pull the trigger on the furloughs.
Wrong guess.
But it will likely get worse for the CSEA for yet another simple reason: New Yorkers are very likely to discover that their lives won't miss a beat for the seven days during which each worker will take one unpaid holiday. Until a budget deal is reached, the legislature will have to vote on furloughs every week. The amount of money saved in a single week? $30 million of taxpayer money.
Do the math. Ten weeks, $300 million. Forty weeks? $1.2 billion.
I lived in New York for thirty-five years. I've seen park workers drinking from 40 oz. malt liquor bottles while they were picking up leaves. I've woken up cops sound asleep in their patrol car. I watched a garbage man pick up a stack of newspapers, drop them on the way to the garbage truck, and leave them in the middle of the street. I talked to a principal who didn't want to investigate the possible rape of a 13-year-old girl in his school because it was "too much trouble." I knew a teacher who spent three years in a "rubber room" collecting a salary for doing absolutely nothing. I've seen hospital workers completely ignore patients, and leave their break room strewn with litter. I had a tollbooth operator curse at me for paying part of my toll with pennies, even though it was all the money I had left. I had a subway token booth clerk refuse my request to call the police even though I told him a deranged man was walking along the platform of the Clark Street station in Brooklyn carrying hedge trimmers and jabbing them at people.
I could go on--and on--but you get the picture.
It is said familiarity breeds contempt, and perhaps no other group of workers is more familiar with the kind of salaries, benefits and pensions that make public service employees the beneficiaries of the kind of taxpayer largesse that most taxpayers themselves can only dream about. And no other group of workers is more imbued with the kind of contempt that makes most of them believe they are entitled to all of it, even in the midst of a fiscal meltdown.
"We deserve what we have! And we're not giving any of it back!"
There are millions of us who've experienced the very same punch-the-clock, "it's not my job," self-inflicted torpor that makes virtually every interaction with bureaucracy an unnecessarily arduous and annoying affair. Americans have stood by while government grows exponentially more expensive--even as get gets grossly more inefficient. They have stood by as their hard-earned money paid for pensions rigged to provide workers with more money in retirement than they made working. They stood by as average salaries for public sector workers rose to one-and-a-half times those paid to private sector workers. They stood by as taxes were increased--and government still went deeper and deeper into debt. They stood by as politicians undermined their children's chances for a decent education because they were more afraid of the unions than the voting public. They stood by as state after state cut everything but union perks and union employees.
"We deserve what we have! And we're not giving any of it back!"
Oh yes you are, ladies and gentlemen. Despite every attempt to promote yourselves as dedicated and indispensable workers--using millions of dollars of union dues to do so--Americans are wising up. So are some of the politicians who are beginning to realize you can't get blood from a stone. What CSEA workers in New York are really demanding is more debt, more borrowing and more fiscal irresponsibility for nothing more than their own benefit. And if they don't get want they want is there any doubt Greek-style "demonstrations" aimed at making life miserable for average New Yorkers will be part of their agenda?
Ask any New Yorker who endured an illegal transit strike two years ago the answer to that question.
Government at every level in every state across the country has reached the proverbial fork in the road: we're either headed back towards fiscal sanity, or we're all headed for Greece. Realistically speaking, the jury's out on which road we're taking for yet another daunting reason: in states like New York and California, there are so many pubic service employees they can carry an election, even if the rest of the public votes against their candidates. In other words, they can literally command an unwilling public to pay for more government--even to the point of fiscal suicide.
Obviously if a state behaves in such a manner, people can move to another state. But what about another country? It is no secret that the federal government is the biggest offender of all. In April it was reported that several employees at the SEC, some of which are making over two hundred thousand dollars a years, spent the entire day watching pornography on their computers. "Each of the offending employees has been disciplined or is in the process of being disciplined, aid SEC spokesman John Nester. "Some have already been suspended or dismissed." Really? Why hasn't every one of them been fired?
"We deserve what we have! And we're not giving any of it back!"
It is worth reminding Americans that public service employees and the Democrat party are joined at the hip. The Obama administration has made it crystal clear that they intend to "spread the wealth around" with unions as both the primary distributors and beneficiaries.
And despite the fact that most Americans don't realize it, Obama and company are willing to subvert the law to do so. This is precisely what occurred when Chrysler and GM were bailed out. Primary credit holders were shoved aside in direct contravention to bankruptcy laws so that the United Auto Workers union could be moved to the head of the line. This despite the fact that bloated union benefits were the primary impetus for car companies going bankrupt in the first place.
And despite the fact that the UAW is a private sector union, billion of dollars of taxpayer money was used to float their boat.
"We deserve what we have! And we're not giving any of it back!"
Nice slogan, but I've got a better one:
Remember in November!
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© 2010, Arnold Ahlert |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||||
