Pensions and Benes for Unionized Public Employees are next bubble to pop.

[240 is Back]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/49984.html

Florida Gov. Rick Scott voiced tentative support for collective bargaining agreements — so long as union members are aware of what their leaders are negotiating for.

“My belief is as long as people know what they’re doing, collective bargaining is fine,” Scott said Tuesday on WFLA Radio. That is, he said, “as long as people know what they are voting for.”

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POLITICO 44
Scott did say, however, that he’s concerned about fairness, especially when it comes to public sector employees. “When I look at state workers, I have to say I’m going to be fair to taxpayers. … Let’s pick pay as an example; you know, I’ve never been anywhere where people think they’re paid perfectly fairly.”

In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans in the state Legislature are pushing a bill that would restrict collective bargaining for most public sector employees. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich is supporting a state Senate bill that would ban collective bargaining for public employee unions. Potential Republican presidential hopefuls, including Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, have spoken out in support of the bill.

Scott said he has no plans to support similar legislation introduced in Florida but looks forward to the debates elsewhere around the country.

[Soul Crusher]

By STEVEN MALANGA
www.wsj.com


Government workers have taken to the streets in Madison, Wis., to battle a series of reforms proposed by Gov. Scott Walker that include allowing workers to opt out of paying dues to unions. Everywhere that this "opt out" idea has been proposed, unions have battled it vigorously because the money they collect from dues is at the heart of their power.

 Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) on the budget battles in Washington and back home.

.Unions use that money not only to run their daily operations but to wage political campaigns in state capitals and city halls. Indeed, public-sector unions especially have become the nation's most aggressive advocates for higher taxes and spending. They sponsor tax-raising ballot initiatives and pay for advertising and lobbying campaigns to pressure politicians into voting for them. And they mount multimillion dollar campaigns to defeat efforts by governors and taxpayer groups to roll back taxes.

Early last year, for example, Oregon's unions spearheaded a successful battle to pass ballot measures 66 and 67, which collectively raised business and income taxes in the state by an estimated $727 million annually. Led by $2 million from the Oregon Education Association and $1.8 million from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), unions contributed an estimated 75% of the nearly $7 million raised to promote the tax increases, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Also in 2010, teachers unions and public-safety unions in Arizona were influential players in the successful ballot campaign to increase the state's sales tax to 6.6% from 5.6% to raise an additional $1 billion. Some state business groups also supported the tax increase in the vain hope that the legislature would roll back business and investment taxes. The public unions, by contrast, wanted the tax hike precisely to avoid government spending cuts.

Slideshow: Teachers Revolt
Public employee protests spread across the Midwest.
.In Washington state there was a ballot measure last November that would have raised $2 billion by imposing an income tax on those earning more than $200,000. The media portrayed the political fight as a battle among the rich. That's because William H. Gates Sr, father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, supported the tax, while Microsoft's current chief executive, Steve Ballmer and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos opposed it.

But unions were the real power behind the scenes. According to Ballotpedia.com, state and national SEIU locals gave $2.5 million, while the National Education Association and Washington teachers union locals contributed $900,000 to the $6 million campaign for the new income tax. In the end, Washingtonians voted down the tax, in part because they feared it would eventually be expanded to everyone.

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David Gothard
 .This was not the first time that government unions targeted upper-income earners. In 2004, California labor groups—including the California Teachers Association, the SEIU, and health interests such as the California Council of Community Health Agencies—led a successful $4.7 million campaign to raise the state income tax on those making more than $1 million and devote the money to health-care funding. In all, public unions gave $1 million to the Proposition 63 effort, while public health groups donated another $1.3 million, according to HealthVote.org.

In New York in 2008-09, then-Gov. David Paterson balked at tax increases and proposed budget cuts in an attempt to come to grips with the state's growing fiscal crisis. In response, unions launched a barrage of attack ads. The New York State United Teachers union spent $750,000 advocating against a cap on property taxes. The state's health-care unions (and hospitals) mounted a $1 million radio campaign against Medicaid cuts. In the end, the legislature raised a host of taxes, including higher levies on the incomes of those earning more than $200,000.

Across the Hudson, New Jersey's powerful teachers union has led the fight against Gov. Chris Christie's efforts to cut spending. The New Jersey Education Association collects about $100 million a year in dues from its 203,000 members; last spring the union spent $300,000 a week, according to the head of the union, for radio ads urging tax increases on the rich instead of budget cuts. But Mr. Christie held firm and his budget was passed largely as he proposed it.

Public unions are also among the biggest players in national politics. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (Afscme) has been the third-biggest contributor to federal campaigns over the past 20 years, having given $43 million. The National Education Association is number eight with $31 million in contributions, while the SEIU—half of whose 2.2 million members are government workers—is No. 10, with $29 million in campaign donations.

Unlike businesses and industry groups that are also big givers but tend to split their donations between the parties, some 95% of government workers' donations has gone to the Democratic Party, whose members are far more likely to favor raising taxes and boosting spending than are members of the Republican Party.

The union strategy is finally beginning to encounter pushback. Last year, supporters of Gov. Christie, anticipating a union onslaught, set up a group called Reform Jersey Now to back the newly elected governor with a public relations campaign in his first budget battle. The group spent about $624,000, with contributions from business PACs, including those representing the state's construction industry, and from money donated by the Republican Governors Association.


And in New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has urged business groups to counter union efforts to defeat his budget, which cuts spending by $3.7 billion. In response, a group that calls itself the Committee to Save New York, financed by business groups and executives, has launched a $10 million advertising campaign in support of Gov. Cuomo's planned spending cuts for Medicaid and education, as well as his efforts to cut the cost of state workers' pensions.

If Gov. Walker succeeds in Wisconsin, it's likely that other reformers will follow his lead and explore ways to restrict public-sector unions' use of members' dues. Tax advocates in California, for instance, have proposed an initiative that would require a government union to gain the approval of individual members in order to divert dues into political campaigns. Such measures would give opponents around the country a new playbook to follow in countering the rich resources and deep influence of public unions over taxes and spending.

Mr. Malanga is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of "Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy Against the American Taxpayer" (Ivan R. Dee, 2010).

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[Soul Crusher]

February 23, 2011
Collective Bargaining Doesn't Work In the Public Sector
By Steven Malanga

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2011/02/23/collective_bargaining_doesnt_work_in_the_public_sector_98884.html#


________________________ ____________



Shortly after California voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978, open warfare broke out in the union movement between leaders of public and private worker groups.

In the Washington Post, an anonymous lieutenant of AFL-CIO president George Meany criticized the aggressive stance of Jerry Wurf, head of American Federation of State County and Municipal workers, in trying to defeat Prop 13, which capped property taxes. The problem, the Post pointed out, was that the AFL-CIO's members were the "taxpaying employers" of Wurf's workers and favored the tax and spending limitations of Prop. 13. "Jerry's big problem with the tax thing lies in convincing the rest of the trade union movement of the legitimacy of the positions he has taken," said the AFL-CIO official.

What a difference a few decades makes. Today, public sector unions dominate the union movement, including the AFL-CIO, and have become the chief lobbyists for higher taxes and more government spending in America. Meanwhile, defenders of government unions argue that any attack on them is an attack on unionization in general. So Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to trim collective bargaining for state workers has elicited a host of apocalyptic declarations from politicians heavily supported by government unions, including President Obama, who called Walker's agenda, "an assault on unions."

(The president conveniently failed to note, as Josh Barro has pointed out on PublicSectorInc.com, that federal workers have fewer collective bargaining rights than what Walker is proposing in Wisconsin and that the President used his power over wages to impose a freeze on federal employees.)

But Walker's proposals to severely limit government union prerogatives are simply a recognition of something that political leaders and union officials across the ideological spectrum recognized for decades in America before the 1960s, which was that, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote, ‘the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."

It's that larger understanding that motivates Walker. His critics are right to point out that he could balance this year's budget without going so far as rescinding collective bargaining. He could do so by simply employing the techniques, including gimmicks like refinancings and dubious actuarial formulas, that politicians have been using over the years to push off obligations further into the future and make state and local liabilities seem less bankrupt than they actually are. But Walker sees this as a decisive moment to end an unworkable system.

Walker's proposals are a recognition that five decades of public sector unionization have given us a system where, as a labor leader in New York presciently observed in the 1970s, unions have had ability to elect their own bosses, so that every taxpayer effort at reform and restraint over the years has dissolved eventually into new rounds of benefits and perks for government workers. It's a system without the competitive restraints on both management and labor that exist in the private sector.

George Meany himself once declared that "you can't collectively bargain with government,' and as government workers lobbied increasingly for unionization throughout the 1950s some private sector labor leaders resented the argument of their public sector counterparts that government workers were somehow oppressed and desperately in need of union protection. The period was one of reform, in which cities were already enacting civil service laws protecting government workers from being summarily fired, and employee associations rose to testify for public worker rights even, though these groups didn't have bargaining rights.

But the public sector union movement gained traction because of changing political currents. Unionization came to be associated increasingly during that period with the Democratic Party thanks to legislation like the 1935 Wagner Act, sponsored by New York Democratic Senator Robert F. Wagner, which gave private sector workers the right to bargain. As unions played an increasingly important role in the Democratic Party in the 1940s and 1950s, their political value became apparent to elected officials like Sen. Wagner's son, New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Mayor Wagner jolted the public sector union movement into life when in 1958 he gave city employees the right to collectively bargain, in the process making them valuable political allies in his reelection bid and igniting a series of similar moves by other politicians in cities and states across America.

What happened next confirmed the fears of many critics. The 1960s were a time of government strikes, including several dozen in September of 1966 by teachers that shut down school systems in some of our largest cities. When cities and states responded with laws outlawing strikes among government workers, unions developed a new strategy, concentrating their firepower in state capitals and city halls to elect leaders sympathetic to their cause. Over time they've become the biggest players in places like Sacramento, Albany and Madison, and such a permanent presence that every effort at reform is eventually undermined.

In the late 1970s, for instance, New York State enacted changes to its pension system for state and local workers after rich employee perks played a role in New York City's near bankruptcy. But over time public workers clawed back their benefits so that today, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during his election campaign, public pensions are unsustainable in the Empire State. In New York City alone pension contributions in one decade have gone from $1.5 billion annually to $7 billion, straining the city's budget.

California enacted pension reforms in 1991 which limited the impact of pensions on the state budget. But in 1999, Gov. Gray Davis and the state's Democratically controlled legislature wiped out those reforms, retroactively putting everyone who had joined the state's workforce in the 1990s into a new, richer system so that today California has unfunded pension liabilities ranging from $200 billion to $500 billion.

That's become a strategy of public worker unions. They fight reforms, but if they lose they wait 'till they can elect a new set of more sympathetic legislators and then reclaim their gains.

Public unions are bolstered by the fact that government never goes away, unlike private businesses where unions overreach. In the public sector, there are always taxpayers to turn to when a pension system or health care plan needs to be bailed out thanks to rich giveaways to unions.

Although Walker is being demonized as a union buster, in truth he's only asking for the same powers to manage his budget and workforce that President Obama already enjoys.

 


Steven Malanga is an editor for RealClearMarkets and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute

[Soul Crusher]

Public Unions Must Go
Townhall.com ^ | February 23, 2011 | Jonah Goldberg

________________________ ________________________ __________-


The protesting public school teachers with fake doctor's notes swarming the Capitol building in Madison, Wis., insist that Gov. Scott Walker is hell-bent on "union busting." Walker denies that his effort to reform public-sector unions in Wisconsin is anything more than an honest attempt at balancing the state's books.

I hope the protesters are right. Public unions have been a 50-year mistake.

A crucial distinction has been lost in the debate over Walker's proposals: Government unions are not the same thing as private-sector unions.

Traditional, private-sector unions were born out of an often-bloody adversarial relationship between labor and management. It's been said that during World War I, U.S. soldiers had better odds of surviving on the front lines than miners did in West Virginia coal mines. Mine disasters were frequent; hazardous conditions were the norm. In 1907, the Monongah mine explosion claimed the lives of 362 West Virginia miners. Day-to-day life often resembled serfdom, with management controlling vast swaths of the miners' lives. Before unionization and many New Deal-era reforms, Washington had little power to reform conditions by legislation.

Government unions have no such narrative on their side. Do you recall the Great DMV cave-in of 1959? How about the travails of second-grade teachers recounted in Upton Sinclair's famous schoolhouse sequel to "The Jungle"? No? Don't feel bad, because no such horror stories exist.

Government workers were making good salaries in 1962 when President Kennedy lifted, by executive order (so much for democracy), the federal ban on government unions. Civil service regulations and similar laws had guaranteed good working conditions for generations.

The argument for public unionization wasn't moral, economic or intellectual. It was rankly political.

Traditional organized labor, the backbone of the Democratic Party, was beginning to lose ground. As Daniel DiSalvo wrote in "The Trouble with Public Sector Unions," in the fall issue of National Affairs, JFK saw how in states such as New York and Wisconsin, where public unions were already in place, local liberal pols benefited politically and financially. He took the idea national.

The plan worked perfectly -- too perfectly. Public union membership skyrocketed, and government union support for the party of government skyrocketed with it. From 1989 to 2004, AFSCME -- the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees -- gave nearly $40 million to candidates in federal elections, with 98.5 percent going to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Why would local government unions give so much in federal elections? Because government workers have an inherent interest in boosting the amount of federal tax dollars their local governments get. Put simply, people in the government business support the party of government. Which is why, as the Manhattan Institute's Steven Malanga has been chronicling for years, public unions are the country's foremost advocates for increased taxes at all levels of government.

And this gets to the real insidiousness of government unions. Wisconsin labor officials fairly note that they've acceded to many of their governor's specific demands -- that workers contribute to their pensions and health-care costs, for example. But they don't want to lose the right to collective bargaining.

But that is exactly what they need to lose.

Private-sector unions fight with management over an equitable distribution of profits. Government unions negotiate with friendly politicians over taxpayer money, putting the public interest at odds with union interests, and, as we've seen in states such as California and Wisconsin, exploding the cost of government. California's pension costs soared 2,000 percent in a decade thanks to the unions.

The labor-politician negotiations can't be fair when the unions can put so much money into campaign spending. Victor Gotbaum, a leader in the New York City chapter of AFSCME, summed up the problem in 1975 when he boasted, "We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss."

This is why FDR believed that "the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," and why even George Meany, the first head of the AFL-CIO, held that it was "impossible to bargain collectively with the government."

As it turns out, it's not impossible; it's just terribly unwise. It creates a dysfunctional system where for some, growing government becomes its own reward. You can find evidence of this dysfunction everywhere. The Cato Institute's Michael Tanner notes that federal education spending has risen by 188 percent in real terms since 1970, but we've seen no significant improvement in test scores.

The unions and the protesters in Wisconsin see Walker's reforms as a potential death knell for government unions. My response? If only.

[Soul Crusher]

Providence plans to pink slip all teachers
Providence journal ^ | 2/23/11 | Linda Borg

________________________ __________________--


PROVIDENCE — The school district plans to send out dismissal notices to every one of its 1,926 teachers, an unprecedented move that has union leaders up in arms.

In a letter sent to all teachers Tuesday, Supt. Tom Brady wrote that the Providence School Board on Thursday will vote on a resolution to dismiss every teacher, effective the last day of school.

In an e-mail sent to all teachers and School Department staff, Brady said, “We are forced to take this precautionary action by the March 1 deadline given the dire budget outline for the 2011-2012 school year in which we are projecting a near $40 million deficit for the district,” Brady wrote. “Since the full extent of the potential cuts to the school budget have yet to be determined, issuing a dismissal letter to all teachers was necessary to give the mayor, the School Board and the district maximum flexibility to consider every cost savings option, including reductions in staff.” State law requires that teachers be notified about potential changes to their employment status by March 1.

“To be clear about what this means,” Brady wrote, “this action gives the School Board the right to dismiss teachers as necessary, but not all teachers will actually be dismissed at the end of the school year.”

“This is beyond insane,” Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith said Tuesday night. “Let’s create the most chaos and the highest level of anxiety in a district where teachers are already under unbelievable stress. Now I know how the United States State Department felt on Dec. 7 , 1941.” That was the day the Japanese government bombed Pearl Harbor.


(Excerpt) Read more at projo.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

Teacher "Sick Out" in Michigan
Michigan Capitol Confidential ^ | 2/23/2011 | Tom Gantert




About 40 percent of the West Bloomfield High School teachers didn’t show up for work on Feb. 15 in the midst of bitter contract negotiations.

Superintendent JoAnn Andrees said that 41 high school teachers didn’t show up and that 36 of those teachers were not within a normal “pattern” of absences. Andrees said as many as a dozen teachers could be out on a typical day. The Michigan Department of Education said there are about 100 teachers at the high school as of 2009-10.

“Nothing has happened to this degree before,” Andrees said.

The missing classes were filled with substitutes and administrators, as well as other support staff from other buildings, Andrees said.

“I was so impressed with Bloomfield students on this day,” Andrees said. “Classes went on. … Kudos to my kids.”

Contract negotiations between the administration and unions began in October 2009. The teachers’ union contract expired Aug. 31, 2010.

West Bloomfield teachers do not do any premium sharing for health insurance and do not have a deductible in their plan, Andrees said.

“The district can no longer afford to pay for everything,” Andrees said. “The money is not there now. I can not continue that practice.”


(Excerpt) Read more at michigancapitolconfident ial.com ...

[240 is Back]

they should look at who wrote these asinine plans - when the money wasn't there.

Stop letting superintendents just rubber stamp insane budgets then waltz out with a golden parachute.

we're starting to see there is a ceiling on this whole "the govt is incompetent, you can't blame them" mindset that has been around for decades.

[Soul Crusher]

they should look at who wrote these asinine plans - when the money wasn't there.

Stop letting superintendents just rubber stamp insane budgets then waltz out with a golden parachute.

we're starting to see there is a ceiling on this whole "the govt is incompetent, you can't blame them" mindset that has been around for decades.

THATS THE FUCKING POINT! 

The unions pressure the pols to go along with this crap and then fund their campaigns to get them elected.  The taxpayer is not represented at these things and thats' why public unions need to go.     

[240 is Back]

THATS THE FUCKING POINT! 

The unions pressure the pols to go along with this crap and then fund their campaigns to get them elected.  The taxpayer is not represented at these things and thats' why public unions need to go.     

IMO, the problem is the pols that rubber stamp the budget. 

Would chris cristie fold to the pressures of some silly union?  Shit, no.

[Soul Crusher]

IMO, the problem is the pols that rubber stamp the budget. 

Would chris cristie fold to the pressures of some silly union?  Shit, no.

Yeah, and guess who wins in 90% of te elections -  33 the tea bagger running a campaign on a shoe string, or some poliician backed with millions from the unions he supports and rubber stamps the benes for?   

The taxpyer gets FUCKED an hs little chance in this scheme.     

[Soul Crusher]

Editorial: Greece, Wisconsin ... is California next?
The Orange County Register ^ | 2-23-2011 | Mark Landsbaum



The near-anarchy that swept Greece last year hasn't come yet to the United States, but there are similarities. As in Greece, thousands of workers who rely on taxpayers for their livelihoods have poured into Wisconsin streets to protest. Similarly, they protest entirely reasonable and necessary economies proposed by their government to ward off insolvency. Likewise, they insist they have a right to live well, no matter how burdensome it becomes for those who pay the bill.

California's fiscal condition is just as dire for the same reason: a voracious appetite of government worker unions. An ultimate showdown is coming to determine whether government exists to serve the people or the people it employs. . .


(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

Even FDR Understood: No Collective Bargaining for Public Servants
Pajamas Media ^ | February 23, 2011 | Peter Ferrara



There is no legitimate role for government unions.

Public servants — meaning government employees — don’t work for greedy miscreants exploiting them for personal profit. They work for democratically elected officials representing the will of the people. This is just one reason why there is no legitimate role for government unions, and there should be no collective bargaining rights for public servants.

Since public servants work for the people, their wages, benefits, and working conditions are set in accordance with the will of the people, as determined by the democratic process. This is why it is not legitimate to ask the people to compromise with public servants in collective bargaining. And this is why the pay, benefits, and working conditions for federal workers are set by acts of Congress, not through collective bargaining.

If public servants do not like the pay, benefits, and working conditions offered to them by the people as determined through the democratic process, nothing requires them to be public servants. This is why public servants are not slaves without collective bargaining, as soon-to-be-unemployed collective bargaining agents have suggested.


Since public servants work for the people, any strike by them would be a strike against the people. The government cannot allow the essential public services it provides to be shut down while it negotiates the pay, benefits, and working conditions for public servants through collective bargaining.


The right of collective bargaining for private sector workers is not at issue in Wisconsin, though the government unions, the Democrats, and President Obama want to confuse the public on precisely that question. Under current law, there are plenty of market and legal checks on private sector unions to keep them from abusing the public. The ultimate limit if they push too far is that their company will be driven out of business. Though that does happen sometimes, it only happens when management fails to do its job in resisting excessive union demands. Otherwise, within current market and legal checks, private sector unions actually perform a helpful market function in ensuring that employers keep up with market wages and working conditions as expeditiously as possible.


Not so for government unions, as governments cannot be driven out of business. They gain their revenue forcibly through taxes. As a result, there is no market limit to how much such unions can milk the public.


Moreover, government unions themselves can choose who negotiates with them on behalf of the people, through their votes and political support. In return for lavish pay and benefits far exceeding private compensation, the unions provide a kickback in campaign contributions and muscle to their political benefactors, financed by the taxpayers. This inherent conflict of interest involved in government unions leads to oppressive political corruption, where there is no political limit as well as no market limit to the plunder of the public by government unions.


What is at stake in Wisconsin is whether public servants work for the American people, or whether the American people work for a “public servant” aristocracy enjoying far greater pay and benefits than the taxpayers who are forced to subsidize them through the above-described political corruption.


These are the reasons why even an ultimate liberal like Franklin Delano Roosevelt agreed with me that there should be no collective bargaining for public servants. As quoted by Michael Walsh in yesterday’s New York Post, Roosevelt said:


All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public-personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people.


What we are witnessing in Wisconsin today is the total breakdown of democracy, and the collapse of the rule of law. The Democrat Party in the state has refused to abide by the results of the election last November, and so has shut down the state legislature. The government unions are breaking the law by going out on strike. The anti-democracy protestors in Madison are breaking the law by continuing to occupy the state capitol. Doctors are breaking the law by writing fraudulent “sick notes.” The remaining Democrat state senators after last fall’s election have fled the state to hide from the law.


The only people expected to obey the law in Wisconsin now are the taxpayers.


Governor Walker and the Republicans are trying to pass a moderate bill to the left of FDR that still maintains some collective bargaining rights for government workers. Moreover, their bill would greatly benefit state and local workers by terminating government collection and payment of their union dues. This gives power to each worker to voluntarily decide if they want to pay those dues. That is like a tax cut of as much as $1,000 a year for state and local government workers. That policy needs to be adopted in every state, as taxpayer money going to government union dues is the root of political corruption in America.


Moreover, it is Governor Walker and the Republicans in Wisconsin who are protecting the interests of working people in the state, as it is these working people who must pay the taxes for the lavish pay and benefits of public sector aristocrats, and suffer their own lost jobs and wages resulting from high taxes.


Peter Ferrara is Director of Policy for the Carleson Institute for Public Policy, a Senior Fellow for the Heartland Institute, and Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Institute for Policy Innovation. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush.

[Soul Crusher]

Showdown brewing over CA state employee pensions
San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 2/23/11 | Joe Garofoli,Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writers



A raucous, Wisconsin-style labor showdown is unlikely to unfold in California given its Democratic-controlled Legislature and union-friendly Gov. Jerry Brown.

But a different type of showdown is simmering in California as business and taxpayer groups and Republicans are ratcheting up the pressure on Brown to ask for more concessions from public employee unions to help fill the state's $25.4 billion budget deficit.

While union supporters gathered in Sacramento and Oakland on Tuesday night for vigils to show solidarity with their brethren in Wisconsin, the buzz among the 200 business leaders at the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce earlier in the day was how "in a budget crisis, everything should be on the table," said James Beckwith, president and CEO of Sacramento's Five Star Bank.

"It's the 800-pound gorilla in the room," Beckwith said. "You can't have real budget reform without pension reform."

That "isn't just a state problem, it's far worse in cities," said Marcia Fritz, president of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, a nonprofit pension reform group. While several sources said Brown administration officials have been quietly meeting with union officials about possible concessions, Brown has yet to offer a proposal.

"We need the leader of California to stand up and lead on this issue," Fritz said. "And if he doesn't, we'll go around him, just like people did on Proposition 13 (in 1978 during Brown's first stint as governor). And I don't think he wants that."


(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


February 23, 2011 http://detnews.com/article/20110223/METRO01/102230400

Allen Park official says layoffs needed to plug $600K deficit

SANTIAGO ESPARZA
The Detroit News


Allen Park— The city's finance director said today that Allen Park must lay off 25 to 30 employees by June to avoid a $600,000 deficit for the current fiscal year.

Tim McCurley said in an interview that the city sent layoff notices to everyone in the fire department to comply with a clause in the firefighters' union contract requiring a 30-day notice. He said some or all of the firefighters could lose their jobs, and that the police department faces layoffs too.

"It's a major disruption to our police and fire service than what our residents are used to," he said.

According to McCurley, city officials are discussing several options on how to provide fire protection but have not settled on a plan. He referred further questions in that area to City Administrator Eric C. Waidelich, who did not return phone calls this afternoon.

"It's not easy to lay people off," McCurley said. "No one wants to do that. It's never easy, but we are trying to work through it."

The finance director said the layoffs would only keep the city's books balanced for this year and have nothing to do with any funding cuts in Gov. Rick Snyder's proposed budget for fiscal 2012.

According to McCurley, the city faces a fiscal crunch because revenue in several areas has fallen short of projections. Collections from traffic tickets are $819,000 below what was budgeted, and ambulance billing collections are $200,000 under budget, he said.

McCurley said the city also had to refund $80,000 under order of the Michigan Tax Tribunal.

In other areas, spending has exceeded projections, including $130,000 in parks and recreation. McCurley said the city failed to budget for $150,000 for unused sick and vacation time for employees who have retired.

Overtime in the fire department is $150,000 over budget, even after firefighters agreed to limit overtime pay as part of concessions negotiated last year, McCurley said.

City Council members approved laying off the 25-person fire department Tuesday night.

Fire Chief Doug LaFond said he would be laid off as well.

"That is obviously not what we want," LaFond told The Detroit News this morning. "We want to continue to serve the residents."

Allen Park, like many other communities across the state, is dealing with decreasing property values and falling tax collections. Moreover, the city gave $1.2 million to a movie studio, Unity Studios, that later bolted for Detroit.

But LaFond questioned the need to eliminate his entire force to make up for shrinking revenue.

"The bottom line is there aren't any other cities in the state of Michigan that are eliminating fire departments because of it," LaFond said.

The fire chief said he did not believe the entire police department was being threatened with layoff, but said the police force is about double the size of his department and could see significant cuts.

Police Chief Dean Tamsen said this afternoon he hadn't received word of layoffs in his department, which has 45 officers. However, he said he "can't picture the city laying off firefighters and not police officers. That is wishful thinking."

The chief said he has met with his command staff to map out ways to provide police service if there are cuts.

Tamsen said he has watched as communities across Metro Detroit have made painful cuts to keep up with declining tax bases, shrinking state revenue sharing allotments and the auto industry downsizing.

"I have been doing this job for almost 30 years," Tamsen said. "One of the reasons I came in was job security. That is now gone. I would have never dreamed it would get to this."

Tamsen said many in the community blame the cuts on the failure of the studio deal, but he believes the city's money issues go beyond the money lent to the studio.

"We've never faced a situation like this," the police chief said. "It is horrible."

LaFond said the firefighters' union last fall gave $800,000 in concessions that included the overtime limits and eliminating pay raises for promotions.

"I guess that wasn't enough," he said.

The firefighters union filed a grievance against the city, alleging that a position hasn't been filled as required under the contract, which includes the concessions negotiated last year and expires in March. Union president Jeff O'Riley said his local is willing to consider more concessions, but not before the city fills the position.

"You don't do this to families," he said. "They show no class or respect for the people who have given up so much for the city."

LaFond said his department's ambulance service generates $600,000 annually. He said collections are down, but times are tough and his department shouldn't lose firefighters because of it.

"They have singled us out," he said. "Other departments were able to make cuts through attrition and buyouts."

News of the cuts spread quickly through the community.

Resident Rose Reyes said she is nervous about the layoffs because the city hasn't released details about how public safety would be handled. Reyes, 33, who has lived in the city for six years, said the moves seem like bargaining tactics, which she said isn't fair to the firefighters, officers or residents.

"They are trying to bust the unions all around the United States," Reyes said. "I think that is pretty crummy of them if that is what they are doing. They are taking away our sense of security."

Allen Park Mayor Gary Burtka didn't return calls or e-mails by late this afternoon.

sesparza@detnews.com

(313) 222-2320

[Soul Crusher]

Illinois seeks to borrow $3.7 billion to shore up pension shortfall
Washington Post ^ | 2/23/2011 | Peter Whoriskey

________________________ ____________________-



Having fallen behind in funding its state pensions, Illinois is seeking to raise $3.7 billion through a bond issue this week, as the debate over government budget shortfalls roils state capitols.

The Illinois bond sale is viewed as a sign of how investors see the fiscal troubles in some overburdened states, where budget controversies have led to unrest and protests in places such as Wisconsin. If investors shy away from the bonds, other states, too, may have to pay higher rates when borrowing, making it harder for them to raise money.

The bond sale comes as several states are suffering fiscal shortfalls precipitated by the economic crisis. Moves by governors and Republican legislators to cut spending have drawn protesters to state capitals in Wisconsin and Indiana - where Democratic lawmakers have staged walkouts - and Ohio. In New Jersey on Tuesday, Gov. Chris Christie (R) unveiled a budget plan that would give property-tax credits to homeowners if government workers pay more than triple what they do now for health insurance. Christie is also urging legislators to enact his proposal to reduce state employee pension benefits.

Pensions for government workers are one of the prime targets in the budget debates, at least in part because most private-sector workers no longer receive them, and as the record in Illinois shows, because those obligations can grow quickly.

Illinois' pension system is one of the most poorly funded in the nation, with less than 40 percent of its $139 billion in liabilities funded, according to state figures.

Pension costs account for nearly 13 percent of the state's general fund budget. Illinois' combined pension and debt burden translates to $6,692 per person, the fifth-highest in the country, according to a Moody's report.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

San Jose Officials Warn of Massive Police and Fire Layoffs
Mercury News.com ^ | Feb. 17, 2011 | Sean Webby

________________________ ________________________ ____________



Sketching out a worst-case scenario of San Jose's budget meltdown, city officials warned this week that they could lay off as many as 349 police officers and 145 firefighters, slashing close to a quarter of the city's public safety employees.

The city is also looking at millions of dollars in other cuts, including shutting off neighborhood

streetlights for much of the night and eliminating some gang-prevention programs.

There has never been a major layoff of police officers in the city's modern history. But last year San Jose laid off 49 firefighters, and this is the second year in a row the Police Department has faced layoffs.


(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...

[Hereford]

I would sooooooo like to see CA fail, except that I think the leftists will do their damnest to take everyone else down with them.

[Kazan]

Illinois seeks to borrow $3.7 billion to shore up pension shortfall
Washington Post ^ | 2/23/2011 | Peter Whoriskey

________________________ ____________________-



Having fallen behind in funding its state pensions, Illinois is seeking to raise $3.7 billion through a bond issue this week, as the debate over government budget shortfalls roils state capitols.

The Illinois bond sale is viewed as a sign of how investors see the fiscal troubles in some overburdened states, where budget controversies have led to unrest and protests in places such as Wisconsin. If investors shy away from the bonds, other states, too, may have to pay higher rates when borrowing, making it harder for them to raise money.

The bond sale comes as several states are suffering fiscal shortfalls precipitated by the economic crisis. Moves by governors and Republican legislators to cut spending have drawn protesters to state capitals in Wisconsin and Indiana - where Democratic lawmakers have staged walkouts - and Ohio. In New Jersey on Tuesday, Gov. Chris Christie (R) unveiled a budget plan that would give property-tax credits to homeowners if government workers pay more than triple what they do now for health insurance. Christie is also urging legislators to enact his proposal to reduce state employee pension benefits.

Pensions for government workers are one of the prime targets in the budget debates, at least in part because most private-sector workers no longer receive them, and as the record in Illinois shows, because those obligations can grow quickly.

Illinois' pension system is one of the most poorly funded in the nation, with less than 40 percent of its $139 billion in liabilities funded, according to state figures.

Pension costs account for nearly 13 percent of the state's general fund budget. Illinois' combined pension and debt burden translates to $6,692 per person, the fifth-highest in the country, according to a Moody's report.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...

Glad that fuckhead Quinn won the election

[Soul Crusher]

The Pensioner's Dilemma : Is the right to a leisurely retirement practical or even desirable ?
American Thinker ^ | 02/24/2011 | Stephen Mauzy

________________________ ________________________ ___________--




"What government touches, government ruins" stands as apodictic a law as any in nature.  To say "touch" is to be magnanimous, because government rarely touches, it inserts -- an iron fist mostly. And where intromission occurs, distortion, inefficiency, moral hazard, expense, corruption, and a lot of pain follow. 


The examples are so numerous -- in commerce, in finance, in education, in ecology, in welfare, and in the law -- they appear on a whim to anyone conversant in Austrian- or Chicago-school economics.  Retirement requires a little more vetting. Sure, there is the obvious: Social Security, which even a few enablers of government-sponsored ruination will acknowledge, during brief lapses into lucidity, is at its core a multitrillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.


Unfunded state pension liabilities are equally obvious: California is putatively $55 billion in the hole (unofficial estimates put the number at $500 billion), New Jersey posts a $53-billion account deficit, even small-fry Maine over-promised its public masters and finds itself $4 billion in the red.  A 2010 Pew Center reports an official nationwide shortfall of $1 trillion, while Professors Joshua Rauh and Robert Novy-Marx estimate $3 trillion.


Before bloated pensions swamped the public sector, they flattened many in the private sector; none more notable than Bethlehem Steel, whose history spanned a century and a half of American commerce. By the 1950s and 1960, Bethlehem was sitting in high cotton, so high, in fact, that it doled out lavish retirement benefits like so much Halloween candy.  By the 1990s, the high cotton had been picked away by foreign competition and what remained was crushed under the weight of unserviceable debt.  In 2001, Bethlehem filed for bankruptcy. One year later, it transferred its pension fund and its obligations to the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which promptly scrapped Bethlehem's 30-years-and-out agreement with the union.


It should never have come to this.  A hundred years ago, retirement plans were private-sector novelties, and played no role in attracting or retaining employees.  That all changed when government got into the distortion business big time during World War II. The combination of wage and price controls on an evaporating labor pool made attracting employees difficult. Businesses discovered that offering retirement plans allowed them to circumvent these controls.


Over time, big business and big government embraced retirement-plan schemes, even though benefits-as-compensation is always bad business, because benefits are suboptimal compensation.  Benefits force employers to rank workers' utility.  With cash, employees are free to choice purchases that rank highest on their utility scale: retirement funding and disability insurance for those who value the future more than the present, Aruba vacations and BMWs for those who don't. 


Defined-benefit plans demand more clairvoyance than is practical, so the best of times get extrapolated -- evinced by ridiculous compounding rates -- with no thought of subdued times, much less the worst of times.  Defined-benefit plans are paternalistic and infantilize the workforce. Because of the promise to fund their retirement, employees are released of the adult responsibility of anticipating the future.  Meanwhile, government -- by demanding social security contributions, insuring defined-benefit plans, and offering defined-benefit plans to its employees -- promotes the unrealistic expectation that everyone has the right to live as a rentier.  The recent private-sector switch to defined-contribution has yet to shift the paradigm for government employees.   


More insidious, defined benefit means defined mobility.  Many workers exchange the prime years of their lives to work at jobs that are disagreeable in exchange for a thumb-twiddling retirement at an age that may or may not come.  After all, not even government is so omnipotent to guarantee everyone reaches old age.  Nor is government so omnipotent to guarantee the pension contract.  Pensioners delude themselves into thinking they've earned their sinecure, so the contract is inviolable, but they are hardly in a position to impose their will.


The saga of Stefano di Poggio is both cautionary and revealing. In the early fourteenth-century, Castruccio Castracani rose to power in Lucca, Italy, thanks to political power of Stefano di Poggio and his family, who elevated Castracani to the dignity of prince.  While Castracani reveled in his exulted position, the di Poggio and his family stewed in their irritation, believing they had been slighted by Castracani and deserved additional compensation and credit for their support. The family incited a rebellion against Castracani.


Stefano di Poggio, a peaceable old man, objected and compelled the rebels, by his authority, to lay down their arms. Di Poggio offered to negotiate with Castracani, on behalf of the family in order to obtain what di Poggio and the family believed they were due. Castracani listened patiently as Poggio eloquently recited all he and his family had done for Castracani.  When di Poggio finished, Castracani invited di Poggio and his family back to the palace. When they returned, Castracani had them all imprisoned, including di Poggio, and then had them all executed.


Di Poggio's folly was to highlight what he had done for Castracani, not what he could do for him. Di Poggio was no longer valuable to Castracani.  To the contrary, di Poggio was an obligation. Had di Poggio convinced Castracani of his value on future endeavors, di Poggio would have likely lived a longer life. Compensation is as much about tomorrow's work as it is yesterday's.


Today's pensioners are like Stefano di Poggio: they are liabilities because they offer no future value; liabilities are jettisoned first when times turn tough.  Future Social Security pensioners will learn this lesson in time; benefits will continue to shrink and age requirements will continue to rise. Government retirees will experience a retirement more stressful than their employment. (Advice to government employees about those $200,000-a-year private-sector jobs you claim to forgo for the higher calling of "public service:"  you might reconsider those offers.) The money is only yours when it is in your account.  IOUs don't count.  A pension contract is a unilateral contract.


Those of a confused bent believe that pensions are worthwhile because the old need to step aside for the young. The confused wax imbecilically on how economies are zero-sum contests: When China grows the United States must shrink; when a seventy-year old is employed, a twenty-five year old must go without. Because politics is a zero-sum contest, politicians are blinded to the reality that economic activity leads to more activity among all participants.  There really is room for all. 


The right to a leisurely retirement has been imprinted on at least five generations of Americans, which is why so few consider whether it is practical or even desirable to guarantee that everyone should meander through the last twenty years of life.  Degradation intensifies when mental activity abates, and mental activity abates when there is nothing to strive toward and there are no problems to solve. Work for compensation is desirable because work for compensation is an expression of value creation, and value creation instills a sense of self worth.  Work keeps the mind and body alive.


Work or play are personal choices; neither choice should be subsidized or deterred, nor should the choice be relegated to a disinterested third party.  Whenever the individual abrogates responsible, he surrenders his independence to another people's intentions, and another people's intentions are always driven by what is best for the other person.       


Stephen Mauzy is a financial writer, analyst, and principal of S.P. Mauzy & Associates.

[Soul Crusher]

All 2,000 Providence teachers told they could be fired
By Liz Goodwin liz Goodwin
Thu Feb 24, 11:18 am ET
www.yahoo.com



 
Providence, Rhode Island Mayor Angel Taveras is sending layoff warnings to all 1,926 of the city's teachers.

They won't all be dismissed, but state law requires the city to notify teachers by March 1 whether the district could lay them off before the start of the next school year. School officials say warning every teacher gives them the freedom to let go many of them later without having to single any of them out now.

Providence's school district is facing a $40 million budget shortfall next year.

"Are there going to be less teachers? Yes," Taveras told The Providence Journal. "Will there be less schools open next year? Yes. Do I know which teachers and which schools? No."

As you can imagine, the local teachers' union is not taking the news well.


"This is beyond insane," Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith told The Providence Journal's Linda Borg. "Let's create the most chaos and the highest level of anxiety in a district where teachers are already under unbelievable stress. Now I know how the United States State Department felt on Dec. 7, 1941."

Meanwhile, 106 teachers got pink slips in nearby Central Falls Public School District. Only 11 of those teachers will be fired due to poor performance, according to GoLocalProv.

Central Falls High School, one of the worst performing schools in the state, became a battleground of the education reform movement last year, when the superintendent threatened to fire its entire teaching staff after the union wouldn't agree to a longer school day, after-school tutoring, and a new evaluation system without much extra pay. Teachers argued that the area's poverty, not their lack of effort, was responsible for low test scores. Education Secretary Arne Duncan applauded the decision to force the teachers to do more work or lose their jobs.

Providence isn't the only town downsizing its school system. In an unprecedented move, the city of Detroit is planning on closing half of its 142 schools by 2014 in an effort to close its budget deficit.

Mass layoffs of public workers have become more common as city and state tax revenues have plunged during the recession. The mayor of Fall River, Mass. fired nearly 150 city employees in 2009, after two big companies in the town, Quaker Fabric and A.J. Wright, laid off almost 3,000 people in 2007. And the tiny city of Maywood, Calif. laid off every one of its employees last year and instead moved to an outsourcing contract system to save money.

(Central Falls High School: AP)

[Soul Crusher]

Idaho Senate votes to curtail teacher's union
Reuters ^ | 02/24/2011 | Laura Zuckerman



(Reuters) - By a 20-15 vote, the Idaho Senate on Thursday approved legislation that curtails collective bargaining by public school teachers.

The measure restricts collective bargaining to salaries and benefits, removing from negotiations such provisions as class sizes, teacher workload and promotions.

Crafted by the state's schools chief and endorsed by the legislature's Republican leaders and Governor Butch Otter, the bill bans collective bargaining unless the teachers union could prove it represented more than 50 percent of educators in a school district.

The legislation now heads to the House, where passage is expected.


(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...

[MB]

There are too many police officers and fire fighters, good to see them thin the herd. 

[Soul Crusher]

UFT spends millions on dinners, parties, parking, coffee as thousands of teachers face layoffs
BY Douglas Feiden
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, February 24th 2011, 4:00 AM

________________________ ________________________ _


 
Hagen for NewsUFT president Michael Mulgrew defended the lavish expenditures of his union, saying they were for the benefit of members. Take our PollUnion Dues
Is the teachers' union a bunch of crooks or dedicated lobbyists for teachers?

      Crooks, they spent $1.4M on a party while teachers face the pink slip.
 Dedicated lobbyists, without the union more teachers' jobs would be in jeopardy.
 I don't know.

 As nearly 5,000 city teachers face the ax, their union shells out millions of dollars on feasting, boozing and partying, the Daily News has learned.

Free-spending United Federation of Teachers brass last year spent nearly $1.4 million for the UFT's 50th anniversary gala at the Hilton - complete with a movie, a book and a paperweight.

Records show they:

Ponied up $514,000 to 16 separate caterers.

Dropped $278,417 on the annual Teachers Union Day ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Bought $6,100 in gift baskets from a lower East Side candy store - and plowed $179,000 into training retreats at a Connecticut resort
boasting golf, scuba diving and aqua aerobics.

In one amazing feat of spending, they shelled out $114,870 for annual "coffee supplies" at their five offices across the city - paying the

Coffee Distributing Corp. on Long Island $324,000 over three years, records show.

And while most New Yorkers spend hours trying to find a parking space, the UFT rents 25 slots in Brooklyn's Renaissance Plaza Garage for members at an average annual cost of $75,000 over three years.

"I'm not going to apologize for spending money to service our members," said UFT President Michael Mulgrew.

"These people are heroes dedicated to making a difference in the lives of our children. They never get the respect they deserve. A cup of coffee, a bottle of water and a few parking spots is the least we can do for them."

The $284,078-a-year union boss got a little more than coffee when he took the reins in August 2009: The UFT feted him with a $6,400 "Welcome, Michael" party at a Brazilian steakhouse.

Mulgrew describes it as dinner for 130 union members, most of them volunteers, that came to barely $50 a head.

Three months later, the union bid farewell to his predecessor, Randi Weingarten, with a goodbye bash at the Tribeca Grill. Price tag: $8,339. "Mayor Bloomberg came and I tried to get him to pay," Mulgrew said. "Wouldn't do it."

Drawing from an annual honeypot of $126 million in members' dues, the union last year flung open the spigots even as it took fire for protecting dismal teachers and fighting reforms.

"These are wasteful, fantastic and outrageous expenditures, and they learned their profligate ways from the government spenders they negotiate with," said Sol Stern, a Manhattan Institute scholar and veteran education advocate.

Not Paris, but it is the Hilton

The spending orgy comes to light a week after after The News disclosed that cops bounced 24 rowdy UFT reps from an Albany eatery after they caused a ruckus over an $1,800 tab - and the modest size of a $40 gourmet quail.

Turns out over-the-top spending and a party-hearty culture is a union trademark.

Documented in the UFT's 2010 annual report to the U.S. Labor Department are details of the union's "Golden Jubilee," a gala bash last March that drew 2,500 members of the "UFT family."

It cost to $679,246 for the event at the Hilton New York.

To mark the milestone for posterity, a CUNY TV Foundation crew was paid $220,000 to film the documentary "UFT: Celebrating 50 Years," and all attendees got a DVD.

The UFT paid a printer $262,406 for a special book and anniversary journal. Paperweights emblazoned with the UFT logo cost $46,333. Balloons, $20,000 for entertainment and other expenses brought the tally to $1.4 million, filings show.

The UFT says it recouped $125,000 by charging members $50 a head, and donations from vendors and advertisers brought in an additional $275,000. Bottom line: That left the UFT out $1 million for the gala.

"We're very proud of the work we've done in 50 years as a union, and it deserved to be celebrated with dignity and respect," Mulgrew said.

dfeiden@nydailynews.com

[Skip8282]

It's amazing the union members themselves aren't going after that kind of corruption.

[Soul Crusher]

California Commission's plan rolls back pensions for current workers
Sacramento Bee - The State Worker ^ | 2-24-11 | Sacramento Bee



The bipartisan Little Hoover Commission recommended today that California state and local governments roll back pensions for existing employees, dump guaranteed retirement payouts and put more of the pension burden on workers.

Although any attempt to reduce pensions for current workers would prompt a legal battle, the commission says that public pension funds are in such dire financial straits that they'll never right themselves by reducing benefits for new hires. The recommendation would not affect current retirees. Click here to read the commission's 106-page report.

The most controversial Hoover proposal would allow state and local governments to freeze existing employee pension benefits and then lower them for future years worked.

Courts have ruled that pensions are legally protected property and that government has a contractual obligation to follow through with them.


(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.sacbee.com ...


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