Posted on 07/16/2009 7:57:44 AM PDT by SmithL
Her speech last week used "fight" four times and "strike" just once, but that was enough to spark reports that Yvonne Walker, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1000, had called for a strike vote.
She didn't, but the speech did mark a new and tougher stance by the local – and a perilous turn for the state's biggest public employee union.
"This week the Local 1000 council voted unanimously to authorize concerted actions up to and including a strike, if necessary," Walker said in the speech webcast to SEIU members last Thursday.
Catch that? "Union actions up to and including a strike."
Walker made her speech the same day that this column reported Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants a 5 percent across-the-board pay cut on top of the thrice-monthly "Furlough Fridays" he has ordered to narrow the state's $26.3 billion budget gap.
The furloughs equal roughly a 15 percent reduction in state workers' pay and save the government's payroll about $1.3 billion over 12 months. If lawmakers don't go along with the added pay cut, the governor could add a fourth Furlough Friday.
The news racheted up angst and anger among many of California's public servants. Soon after Walker's Thursday speech, an anonymous text message circulated, encouraging a sickout on the following Wednesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
1) Let them strike.
2) Let the state go bankrupt.
As a California resident I’d add only one thing.
3) Fire them all and break the unions, then go bankrupt.
Reagan and PATCO was a textbook case of how these things should be handled: The PATCO employees who reported for work within the 48 hour deadline kept their jobs. Those who did not got their pink slips.
Reagan gave a number of great speaches in his career, but the brief explanation to the American people of his PATCO decision was one of the best in my opinion.
Other unions are agreeing to cuts, some a lot deeper than the 15%. Not to mention all us private sector, non-union types who have had our salaries whacked this year. Welcome to the real world, Local 1000.
“Though I’m sure everyone on this thread wouldn’t mind taking an involuntary 15 percent payback made necessary by the incompetence of others, right?”
That’s exactly what just happened at my private sector job and I’m glad to be working. I also had to lay off 2 people out of a team of 12 last week as well. Nobody wants to take a pay-cut, but what do you think raising my taxes to keep you working is for me, silly? You seem to want me to take the pay cut via higher taxes in order to avoid the same for you.
Us taxpayers simply can’t afford to keep state workers on the dole any longer. We do not get enough value for our money from them and its time to cut. Sorry, but things are tough all over.
Texas(the non desert part)is becoming subrubanized with chain stores, big box sellers, and strip malls, and liberal attitudes at an alarming rate.
I fear Texas is where California was in the 80’s. Remember that California was a conservative, rural, and dependably Republican state till the late 80’s. Both Nixon and Regan were from California.
If Texas flips to reliably democratic ... there is no hope for the United States. The electoral map would be titled forever to the democrats. The democrats could effectively ignore the “solid south” and impose their new communism on us all.
Well, your bitterness is understandable, since you actually believe that you have a rational series of arguments.
First of all, yes, we elect representatives who "bargain" on our behalf. Nice theory. How has that worked out? Would we be having this conversation if they had been minimally competent? They are perhaps collectively more ignorant and criminally bent than the average public employee. That system need to be not just "adjusted," but totally overhauled.
Your "indentured servant" argument is pathetic. Not a single "public employee" is forced to accept any conditions she does not like. She is free to leave any time she pleases. You must be using the "Socialist Dictionary" for your definitions.
The reasonable person very easily could extend that argument to the private sector, where the employee can be fired in days, or at the most weeks, where conditions demand it. The public sector is firmly in the grasp of the 20-80 rule; Twenty percent of the employees in any given office do 80% of the work.
I worked in a large "public" facility for 8 years. Long enough to be happy I did not work the first 36 years of my life as a "public employee." I saw it all. Some random examples:
An employee simply disappeared one day. Long story short--- it was 18 months before she was "officially" fired, tying up a supervisor's time a significant amount of his time doing the "paperwork" designed to protect the worker.
Another employee had a side business which he ran out of his "public employee office. Took 4 years to fire him...
Nor are "supervisors" and "overseers" any better, all the way to the top. I toured a project which had cost many millions$, but was abandoned in place after it was completed because it was too expensive to operate it. No one was fired; few people talk about it or even know about it. In private practice this is literally impossible.
The following scenario, which I witnessed personally, summarizes the pathology of the public employee, by the way of contrast.
I became friendly with one of the three owners of a large consulting firm (a few common interests and hobbies), so I had special status in approaching him. Another employee walked up to him and said,"I just passed my state registration exam; do I get a raise?"
The answer was immediate and deadpan: "Do you produce more billable work as a result?" Yes, the employee could simple move on, and eventually he did.
A State employee would have made a federal case out of it. Quite possibly literally.
I "lost" my job in the mini-recession of 1991, when the small firm I worked for was sold and the new owners "kept" their old employees. I had 5 other jobs before I retired, the last being with a public agency. But I have never walked a picket line, nor whined about my absolute right to be entitled to a job and to set my own salary.
Just curious as to how he backed it up with numbers. I am thinking that the process had to cause reductions in other processes. That is how the government views production, or should I say money circulation.
I don't know, sir. Who did you vote for?
Your assumption, like that of far too many others on this site, is that public employees exist to take two-hour lunch breaks and connive for extra time off. Sorry. I call BS on that sort of thinking.
The assumption is that public servants should simply sacrifice their dreams and the livelihoods they have tried to fashion for their families because they're all cheats. I call BS on that "argument" as well. Despite what you might think, and despite what you hear on this website, there are good and decent public servants all over this nation that work hard for the taxpayers who pay them.
Yep. Things are tough all over. I understand that first hand.
Neither did I, and neither have I. It is in fact quite difficult to be a conservative in that kind of environment. It's just that I read far too many opinions from people like you who evidently haven't served the public, and who simply assume that because I did, I'm out to suck on the public teat.
I am in fact looking for a job now. Who knows. I may get to serve you again.
Man this is rich. The same union created by the ACORN founder, is po’d at their own handy work.
Texas is being overrun with Yankees and Kalifornians even as we speak, bringing their union mentality with them.
..................................
I DON’T THINK SO. Even Shiela Jackson Lee knows better than that.
“Your assumption...is that public employees exist to take two-hour lunch breaks and connive for extra time off. Sorry. I call BS on that sort of thinking.”
I’ve had a lifetime of opportunity to observe public employees as has everyone on this site. Calling BS on your long-suffering customers makes you look silly and underscores the “let them eat cake” mentality that we as customers see all the time from government workers.
See, in the private sector, when my customers are unhappy we either improve service or go out of business. In the public sector, workers simply blame their customers and demand more of their money, regardless of the level of service.
“The assumption is that public servants should simply sacrifice their dreams and the livelihoods they have tried to fashion for their families because they’re all cheats.”
You don’t seem to have a problem sacrificing my family and dreams through higher taxes, but there you go. It is another example of the “let them eat cake” mentality that we see in government. I don’t owe you a living and you don’t owe me one.
Also, I didn’t call you a cheat. I wrote that we (your customers) do not receive enough value from public sector employees and that it is time to cut. The alternative is for public employees to improve their service, which I cynically believe will never happen as long as they are unionized.
"Arnold Schwarzenegger wants a 5 percent across-the-board pay cut on top of the thrice-monthly "Furlough Fridays" he has ordered...What this article fails to mention is that state workers ALREADY have had a 15% reduction in pay, which with the 5% added on will be 20%
Add the extra day "furlough friday" (oh how cute!) for 4 day/10 hr workers is another WHOLE WEEK'S PAY taken from these workers.
So far if the new stuff is put in force, that is a 45% cut in pay!
They of course haven't cut the pay of politicians in Calif, nor have the closed any high paying pork type political appointment positions to save some money.
Oh wait, they are going to cut some pork!
Oops, a year and one half from now!As legislators battled over the state budget Tuesday, an independent commission voted to slash lawmakers' per-diem payments, car allowances and medical and other fringe benefits by 18 percent.
The vote in Sacramento by the California Citizens Compensation Commission follows the board's vote last May to cut legislator and constitutional state officer salaries by 18 percent as of December 2010.
But there is more:
Which means it will never happen.The salary cuts could save an estimated $2.9 million a year. The non-salary cuts, which the commission wants to impose starting Dec. 1 of this year, would save an estimated $7.8 million over the next six years.
The 18 percent cut would save $500,000 in car lease payments; $2.8 million in lower state contributions to medical and other benefits; and $4.5 million in lower per-diem rates for the legislators.
The commission's latest cuts could be blocked, however, if legislative leaders decide to challenge the commission's authority to regulate cars and per-diem rates as well as salaries and benefits.
Meanwhile, lower on the totem pole the majority of workers are taking hits.
I have a family member who works for a state hospital, and has had the 20% cut in pay and the three mandatory days (10 hrs per day) off.
I got this person another government part time job at $11.50 per hour, but it doesn't make up for what was lost.
And, btw that one is going down to 10.20 per hour in August.
Like we haven't ?
Everyone in the private sector has already lost about 40-50% of their retirement funds, and there's no taxpayer to make it up like there will be for public pensions.
Most private sector workers haven't half the health and other benefits that public "servants" get, so in normal times we've already taken that 15% pay cut. ANd that was before all the wage consessions,unpaid time off and outright layoffs.
And thirdly, job losses, 3.5 million of them, have already fallen most heavily on the private sector.Three private sector workers have lost their jobs to each public sector worker.
Why should public sector people be so insulated is the question I have. For people who are supposed to serve, us, they have significantly better everything than the private sector. It's way past time for a 50% cut, imo.
We all have to face the reality of what is happening, even public servants. Those jobs were way, way overpaid, at the expense of the private sector, and have been for years.
Let's all repeat together :THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH !
That said, I feel sympathy for you- it sucks to be laid off. But you've avoided the pain the rest of us have been dealing with for at least 10 months now, and that is fundamentally unfair. WE are all going to lose everything, and it's all our own fault for buying a lie.
Sounds like they’re on-board with cost cutting. Maybe a few should quit in protest, too!
:-P
It’s dangerous to view *all* public employees in your light... as the military are public employees, too.
And do you really think that DoD military and civilians simply sit on their @ss trying to scam more money off your back?
“It’s dangerous to view *all* public employees in your light... as the military are public employees, too.
And do you really think that DoD military and civilians simply sit on their @ss trying to scam more money off your back?”
Good point, I agree, but the topic is California State workers. I was addressing that issue, as opposed to our national military.
That said, do you really believe that DoD military and civilians NEVER waste taxpayer money? Of course you don’t. We support them and their mission, but we should not be anyone’s fools.
Unless they are doing it for FREE they aren't 'public servants'! They are GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES!
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