Posted on 11/14/2014 5:09:18 PM PST by mdittmar
The incoming chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has been outspoken about his plans to cut federal employees’ pay and pensions. Besides his previous proposal, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin spoke with the Washington Post this week and discussed what he wants to do when he takes over the committee in January. On his chopping block are federal employees’ pay, health insurance, pensions, and the right to join a union.
“I think it’s unrealistic for public-service employees to believe they are immune from modifications to their pay and benefit packages,” said Sen. Johnson, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010. He went on to say “those things in the private sector have been modified dramatically.”
It’s important to note that a pension is delayed payment for work already done, a condition for taking a job. It’s the employee’s money withheld and invested by the employer to be paid at the employee’s retirement when he/she can no longer work. If the employer cuts the employee’s pension, that means the employer has either embezzled or misspent the employee’s money. The employer is engaging in theft. The same is true for health care.
Obviously inspired by Walmart, Johnson also takes aim at federal employees’ worker protections and the freedom of association. He told the Post, “I really don’t think that the public-sector employees should be unionized.” So the senator wants federal employees to take whatever compensation their employer offers, most likely with ever changing work schedules, no guaranteed overtime pay, and little or no medical care and pension. He appears to oppose the idea of fairness, justice, equality, opportunity, and prosperity. Without a union, employees are basically slaves to their employer.
Meanwhile, Johnson supports massive tax giveaways for corporations and blocked a bill that would end tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas. But he voted against a bill that would end the government shutdown, blocked a bill that would help veterans find good jobs and get the health care they need, voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, voted against a bill that would provide employment protections to gay and transgender workers, and voted to repeal the healthcare law that provides coverage to the uninsured and those with pre-existing conditions.
When I was a kid, everyone new that civil service jobs paid less, but they had great retirement benefits and job security, not unlike the $87.00 a month I earned as a Private in the U.S. Army.
Author is either clueless or projecting his own actions when he says that “If the employer cuts the employee’s pension, that means the employer has either embezzled or misspent the employee’s money. The employer is engaging in theft.”
There are legitimate reasons why a pension might be reduced such as an underperforming market, market meltdown, reduced growth/profit of the company, raised taxes.....
A non-contributory pension is not taken from the person’s salary, it is in addition to their base pay. The company assumes the investment risk, and generally hires an investment manager who determines how to achieve the rate of return needed to provide the stream of income after the person retires.
A contributory plan such as a 401k shifts the investment risk to the employee and is deducted from the employees salary. There is no guaranteed income stream from the employer.
The employer may match employee contributions, and there is some flexibility regarding how much that match will be and is subject to change.
I don’t consider the military as federal employees.....thought they are. Anyone getting shot at has earned their pay.
Prediction:
Federal and state employee pensions will be rolled into SS.
Federal and State employee healthcare bennies will be rolled into Obamacare.
Up here in our state many state workers hire their buds to do 10 or finish out 10 for the free healthcare.
And at the upper echelons they promote each other to fatten retirement bennies.
When I was a kid, everyone new that civil service jobs paid less, but they had great retirement benefits and job security
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When I went in the ‘work force’ late 60’s it was either work for the Govt(any form) for security, the private sector paid a bit more with few bennies .. of course 100 per week was not all that shabby and if you made 10grand a year you were ‘rich’.
FICA was stopped when you reached a certain level and the ‘automatic’ raise was to make sure if FICA stopped in Sept this year, that it would stop in Sept the following year.
Reagan came along and one of his acts was raise the FICA to 100,000 (believe they used the ‘excuse’ no sense letting all those rich guys get away with not paying their ‘fair share’...)
The big difference was that after a few years, the guy that went to work for the City, was getting regular raises, had vacation, retirement, paid sick leave and insurance.
We had none of that with the joke being “better negotiate what pay you want when you get hired, you will be ‘stuck’ with it for a few years”.
Eventually 401K were offered, started giving health insurance (I opted for cash as was covered by my wifes GOVT policy).
The other thing ‘earned’ while for the Govt was your credit was pretty stabilized when it came to buying a house because after a few years your job was pretty much ‘secured’.
Then the Unions got into Government and they continued to get the good, steady pay, all the bennies and a union to suck money out of them.
Ask which government entity he worked for. No body starts with. 5 weeks vacation. And there is no such thing as unlimited sick leave.
Which state is giving lifetime free health care after ten years, or antime for that matter?
I think I recall that JFK allowed the public unions to organize and negotiate. Memories used to be like zerox copies, not they are more like edited word documents, subject to change.
I think I recall that JFK allowed the public unions
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JFK may have ‘looked the other way’ but it was NIXON who signed it into being......
The only two things of importance I tried to instill into my wife was when Blue Cross was broken up and they had open season. Remember when all these ‘little companies’ were offering fabulous rates BUT apparently NO ONE (well except me and it didn’t (really) affect me) realized BC was in business due to safety in #’s... After all that anguish, etc I think BC is still #1 Govt Carrier (at least till BOCare).
The other was when the Govt started to allow the taxpayer to claim a deduction on the baby sitter...those days you could hire your next door neighbor or so to ‘watch the kids’ when they got home from school...etc...
When she (wife) said I am going to claim that, I told her to ‘leave it alone’ as it would come back to bite her AND Marlene when in a couple of years Marlene gets a back tax bill for all the money she made baby sitting.
AHA....I was right both times and did give her the proper advice which further asks the question
“If you are in the forest and make a statement and their are no women around, ARE YOU STILL WRONG?”
And I doubt Ron Johnson considers Congressmen and Senators and their staffs to be 'federal employees' either for the purposes of these cuts either. But both categories are.
I know of one government entity that starts with 6 weeks vacation with unlimited sick leave and 100 percent of their medical insurance paid for. However he understated their pension benefits and overstated their 401k benefits.
“If the employer cuts the employee’s pension, that means the employer has either embezzled or misspent the employee’s money. The employer is engaging in theft. The same is true for health care”
Of course, this only applies to an “employer”. If the government does it...
“Without a union, employees are basically slaves to their employer.”
Funny, but I’ve never had to pay protection racket charges to any of my employers to not only get hired, but also keep my job.
I recently retired from a broke midwestern state. 5 weeks of vacation is pretty much the norm for exempt from overtime employees. Regular employees start off with 12 days vacation and work their way up. Everybody accrues 12 sick days per year, but that doesn't mean they can use it like vacation. They stopped direct sick leave payouts in the late 90's. A years worth of accrued sick days can be applied to certain retirement scenarios, but not all. New hires can accrue sick days, but that is about all.
You nailed it. Federal unions like AFGE can't negotiate over pay or benefits because they are established by congressional statute i.e. law.
But they can and do lobby to the tune of millions every year. It is the equivalent of a privet sector union giving money directly to a company's negotiators to enhance the contract. Where I come from that's called fraud and bribery.
All federal employees hired after 1984 have been under SS.
Similar in Cal state service. I am retired now. We started with 2 weeks and worked our way up to 4 after 25 years. When we retired, any unused sick leave was credited on the work years side of our retirement formula. I had a years worth of SL and got an extra year credited toward my service.
SL is one of the most abused benefits in Cal state service. However, you can roll it over forever and have some credit at retirement.
source?
Most of the perks like that are going the way of the dodo bird for new hires. They jacked up the retirement age to 67 and it takes 10 years to vest in the regular pension plans. It is 5 years for the DIY plan..
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