CA: Legislative analyst recommends rejecting prison guard raises

AP on Bakersfield Californian ^ | 2/8/08 | AP

[NormsRevenge]

The Legislature's nonpartisan fiscal watchdog says prison guards already earn enough money and don't need a 5 percent pay raise proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill says the state can't afford raises for 30,000 prison guards as it battles a widening budget gap.

Veteran guards draw nearly $74,000 in salaries - not counting overtime and annual benefits worth $16,000.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, welcomes the analysis.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association spent $2 million to defeat Nunez' proposal on Tuesday's ballot for term limit changes that would have let Nunez and Senate leader Don Perata remain in office longer.

Union spokesman Lance Corcoran says prison guards could hold illegal strikes if the raises are rejected.

[NormsRevenge]

LAO Reports
State Administration

Correctional Officer Pay, Benefits, and Labor

http://www.lao.ca.gov/2008/stadm/ccpoa_pay_020708/ccpoa_pay_020708.aspx

[John Jorsett]

I’d love to see a war between the legislature and one of the powerful unions that thinks it owns them.

[NormsRevenge]

It would be a shocker to see the CCPOA supporting a recall if the GUb doesn’t buckle under, eh?

we can only hope.

[bpjam]

This union has become a giant whore for whomever is in power. They used to be made up of republicans (the membership) and they used to generally support law and order candidates in various statewide offices. Back in the early nineties, they started putting millions of dollars into campaigns solely for the purpose of getting pay raises. It worked!!! And then they did it with Gray Davis and It worked!!!!

And now they would give millions of Vicente Fox or Hugo Chavez if he could help them get another pay raise. The California system of, literally, pay for pay raises is beyond corrupt. The AFL-CIO gave Gray Davis $24M back in 1998 and Davis handed them not just a pay raise for all state employees but also handed them all of the employees of the state school system (UCDavis, UCIrvine, UCBerkeley, etc) which meant a few hundred millions EACH YEAR in union dues FOR THE REST OF TIME!!

I think it is time for unions to become illegal again like they were in the 1800s. They have destroyed the public trust they once earned and they are now at the heart of government corruption. They do absolutely nothing which a handful of lawyers could not do in an act of collective bargaining every few years when they are needed. The only reason unions (actually, just employees) cannot just hire either lawyers or negotiators on an hourly basis every three or five years to hammer out new contracts with them is that it costs anywhere from tens of times to hundreds of times as much to have mobsters ‘representing’ them year-round.

And the democrat party loves it that way as much as the corrupt union bosses do.

Think you are in a union which is actually good for you? I bet I could, personally, do a better job of getting you what they have gotten for you at far less than half the price. You could hire me and not have to see a hit in your paycheck each week for my services.

[NormsRevenge]

It’s OK, the Indian Tribal Gaming folks will easily take the place of the CCPOA as being a major power broker in this state.

[bpjam]

you are right about that. I was in CA when the tribes first started dumping money into the two parties. And then came Gray Davis who basically sold the state to them for the small price of the casinos being voluntarily unionized (another payoff to the AFL-CIO). The State of CA get virtually nothing in exchange for the hundreds of millions the tribes were about to get. And after that, it was just any incremental step after step until the tribes had enough money to pass or stop anything they wanted. And the referendum route was much easier than bribing individual politicians in the Statehouse so they put up something virtually every two years.