Public Employee Protesters spitting in taxpayers eye

Public Employee Protesters spitting in taxpayers eye

www.politico.com

A new poll from the Washington-based Clarus Group asked:

Do you think government employees should be represented by labor unions that bargain for higher pay, benefits and pensions ... or do you think government employees should not be represented by labor unions?

A full 64% of the respondents said "no."

That includes 42% of Democrats, and an overwhelming majority of Republicans. Only 49% of Democrats think public workers should be in unions at all.

(visit the link for the full news article)

The results aren’t too terribly surprising. While the nongovernmental worker is expected to not only take a cut in wage and benefits because of a poor economy but are also forced to guarantee mandatory wage and benefit increases for “public servants”

Can anyone argue that they are still public servants instead of the public’s new masters?

They act like last November’s elections didn’t happen and ignore the obliteration of the old political class that inhabited places like Madison.


www.politico.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Every worker should have a right to be part a union, wether private sector or public sector period.

Public sector workers are always given bad press simply because they are funded by the tax payer. They are funded by the tax payer simply because they deliver public services that all citizens rely upon and demand. They are easy targets because the mainstream media decide so.

Do you really believe that if these public services were to be abolished, you will suddenly see a decrease in your taxes? The answer is a big fat NO. The real targets should be the bankers. Thay are the ones who have gone unregulated for years and have essentially gambled with your money. They are the ones that have frittered away your pensions, your savings and your investments. They are the sector who are to blame for everything that we are feeling right now.

Unfortunately all you ever hear from the mainstream media outlets is blame the public sector for the taxes you have to pay, when in reality it is the bankers who despite claiming to be part of the private sector have bled the public ycoffers dry. It is this particular sector who has gambled with OUR monet, not THEIRS and have lost everything. Yet, they then come back to us and demand a bail out. What do we do? We simply bow to their requests and hand over the money for them to carry on as before. My goodness we are all going to lose our money unless we obey!!

Please my dear fellow ATS'ers, wake up. Draw all your hard earned money out of the banks and let them rot along with their hedge funds, stocks and shares.

Just because someone works for the government doesn't mean they shouldn't have the same rights as other workers.

Government workers aren't slaves...they are American citizens trying to provide for their family.

reply to post by MindSpin


Not to mention they are tax payers as well.

Originally posted by rogerstigers
reply to post by MindSpin

 

Not to mention they are tax payers as well.

And they get one hell of a return on thier investment, dont they?

Pardon me, but aren't they taxpayers too? Don't they pay for their health care like we do and contribute to their pensions too? In the cases of many, with secured funds?

reply to post by SirMike


That's absolutely fine and I am sure you will get along without the services supplied by the Public services. Undoubtedly you will still have your salary paid into you bank account, therefore still supplying your TRUE masters demand.

I think anyone who can form a union should be allowed to form a union. Why should businesses have the right to form unions of capitalists, (corporations) but labor, the average working person should not have the right to form unions?

Its a gross misunderstanding of how economics works to think that it is somehow good for this country to allow mega corporations near monopolistic price setting powers over labor, and disallow labor the right to unionize so that the price of labor is somewhat subject to market forces.

It would have been better if we had never allowed mega corporations in the first place, but, the milk is spilled.

All interesting responses, but chew on this if you will.

1.Many public employee unions do not have to pay into social security and instead are allowed to use that money to contribute to privately managed pension funds and annuities. When anyone else talks about allowing regular people to do the same thing, they are accused of destroying social security but when public employee unions do it ….

2.Unions representing public employees are the single largest spenders during campaign season. In 2010 AFSCME alone spent $87 in direct contributions to candidates as well as soft money donations. The AFT (American Federation of Teachers) spent nearly $20 million in a similar manner.

3.The amount of money that public employee unions spend, I might add, is more than any other interest sector including defense contractors, banking, wall street and the energy industry.

4.Many states have constitutional guarantees on public sector worker retirement benefits. So no matter how underfunded, poorly managed, or underperforming public retirement accounts are, the beneficiaries know that the state is legally obligated to ring as much money out of the public sector as is needed to fulfill these obligations. How many private sector employees have this same luxury?

5.Public school teachers make over 40% more than their private school peers even though private schools, nearly without exception, outperform their public counterparts at a fraction of the cost.


I am not arguing that these public services be done away with, but by bringing salaries and benefits in line with the public sector they can be done much more cheaply.

Wake up people! We are being turned into thier servants!

The voters have finally woken up and are mad as hell, that’s why in places like Wisconsin and Ohio, decades of back scratching between public servants and elected politicians is being put to and end.

reply to post by SirMike


Honestly? I think that rather than be crabs in a bucket and try to drag them down to our level, we should take some control of our own country, opt of of globalization, and take care of our people. Raise the standards and pay for the rest of our people, not drag the last bastion of decently paid Americans down into the muck with us.

We need to stop letting corporations pay our people slave wages, treat them like animals, manipulate our government, use our tax dollars to build their businesses, export jobs, and secure favorable political climates around the world on the dime of the American worker.

We the people are paying for the export of our jobs, and the slashing of our wages and quality of life.

So no, Im not going to hate on the few Americans who are still being treated like first world citizens.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


Sorry, but the responsibility of local government is to provide daily services to me as frugally as possible. Its not a job program to create a well paid middle class and as someone who, on net, actually pays quite a bit in taxes its my money they are spending.

Do you honestly think that if public employees took a 15% cut in wages and benefits, there would be a decreas in services or quality of services? Come on now!

Doesn’t you realize the inherent conflict of interest created by allowing public employees the power to unionize like they have?

For example, if a politician or group of politicians promise to raise wages for truck drivers, how do they do that? Can they pass a law that says all Teamsters must be paid an additional 10% this year? No, they cannot, because the government does not have that kind of authority over the private sector (above and beyond setting minimum wage and what not). So no matter how hard those Teamsters work on behalf of getting those candidates elected, they could never fulfill that promise.

Public sector unions, on the other hand, have wages and benefits set directly by legislators, and can put their enormous power behind what are completely self serving means.

reply to post by SirMike


Say what you like. Im not promoting the wage slashing, "efficiency" program corporate America has instituted here in the US. You do what you like.

Efficiency and cost cutting never seem to make it to the upper echelons of the organizations, and I dont support squeezing every drop of blood possible out of the lower and middle classes to make the rich richer.

American is not a corporation. Its a country. And my government is supposed to act in the best interests of the people. Not multinational corporations and the wealthy international elite.

Bush's deregulation of investment banks was a spit in my eye.
Bush bailing out the same institutions that deregulation caused to fail was a spit in my eye.
Bush bailing out the airlines, auto manufacturers, banks, etc, was a spit in my eye
Bush tax cuts to the highest earning people and companies in the country DURING A TIME OF WAR no less, was a spit in my eye.
The economy being in the state it is in now because of the failed promise of trickle down economics from the Republicans over the last 30 years is a spit in my eye.

Teachers wanting to retain their right to bargain....not so much.

Maybe you are one of the top AIG employees who will never need teachers or educated members of society around you. Maybe you can learn heart surgery at home or something with all your ill gotten gains. I find it hard to get upset at these teachers when I see wall street counting my money and laughing.

reply to post by Sinnthia


Thank you. After their huge welfare checks to the rich, its kind of hard to garner sympathy from the working class right now for the worker bashing agendas. We are the ones paying the whole tab for the excesses of corporations and the politicians they own. We are the ones working harder, and longer, for less, while corporate America is having huge profit margins.

They have done very well during this recession. Its Americas PEOPLE that are suffering.

American Business: Never Had it so Good

The current profit-reporting season is shaping up to be one of the best ever. For non-financial firms in the S&P 500, earnings per share are now higher than they have been for at least a decade. With over half of the companies in the S&P 500 having reported, profits in 2010 were up by 17% compared with 2009. (The year-on-year increase is far greater if financial firms are included, since they plunged in 2009 and then rebounded spectacularly.)

You can't pay a fat, lazy American $25.oo per hour to put a bolt in a hole and stay in business when a Chinese worker does the exact same job for $1.00 per hour. You simply won't make the money needed to pay him. BUT, government has no competition. If the government workers demand a raise or only want to pay 1% of their healthcare costs, or something like that, you just raise taxes!

reply to post by Kaiju


You can if you dont allow Chinese imports, or American companies to use labor thats not American.

reply to post by SirMike


As a government civil servant, I don't see why my wages are now on a three year pay freeze while inflation in the UK is running at 5.1%. Nor do I appreciate having to work 7 years longer than I was promised when I joined government service in the mid 1980's. In the event my job is terminated, I don't understand either why my cash settlement & pension are being halved.

Oh hang on, I do. They've created money out of thin air, allowed inflation to run riot to reduce the value of government debt & bailed out insolvent financial institutions which continue to pay their employees the most outrageous pay hikes & bonuses (the bankrupt/bailed out British banks are paying out £7 billion to their employees in bonuses this year alone).

Hey, if the Union can represent my interests in all this then I say "God Speed" to all the comrades who wish to represent me & all the other underpaid & overworked souls on the public payroll.