Recooperating(sic) San Jose mayor proposes wage freezes (clone him.)

Sac Bee ^ | 2/13/04 | AP - San Jose

[NormsRevenge]

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - In his first official business since suffering a stroke last month, San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales is asking 5,200 unionized workers to take wage and benefit freezes starting this spring.

The mayor, who proposed the deal Thursday, said freezes could help stem the city's record $85 million budget deficit.

[dighton]

"Recooperating" alert.

[Who dat?]

Smoke and mirrors. They’re under contract and he can’t do anything unless he wants to renegotiate. They won’t. In fact, they’d be stupid to do it.

What they’ll end up doing is either deferring the increases until later or some other gimmick – like I’ll forgo my $0.22/hr raise, but in return I get 3 extra discretionary days off. Either way, you get less work for the same amount of money – and remember that when the economy turns around they’ll cry that they’ve been without a raise for X years – the extra discretionary days will be etched in stone and never mentioned again.

So essentially you have a system where, in hard times, you pay the same amount for less work, and then in good times pay more for the same work. On and on it goes…

[EggsAckley]

Prayers for his FULL and SPEEDY recovery!

Going after the unions.....now THAT'S sweet!

[John Jorsett]

Let me tell you about the "freeze" in my city. Certain departments were due a 5% raise under their contracts. The mayor got those employees to agree to a "freeze" in their pay by giving them an extra day off a month. The agreement also was that they'd get their foregone pay in the coming years, plus the 5% increase, plus whatever other increases were due under the contract. In other words, this "freeze" amounted to a 10% pay increase for that period. Unbelievable. If the general public ever wakes up to how their government is screwing them over, there'll be lynchings.

[aculeus]

Gary Cuper.

[dighton]

Not far from San Jose, Coopertino.