The public sector unions have been conducting class warfare for decades now with full time lawyers and lobbyists
The public sector unions have been conducting class warfare for decades now with full time lawyers and lobbyists. They’ve clobbered property tax payers in NJ, which is why we have the highest taxes as a % of assessed value in the U.S. The median salary for Ridgewood FD was $118,290 in 2011, when the median for Ridgewood PD was $128,239. This compares with Ridgewood median household income at $136,231 as of the 2010 Census. However, those salary figures don’t include the multi-million dollar pensions and almost free healthcare for life we give retirees and their spouse – giveaways which have been made in exchange for little or no contribution from municipal employees until the current CBAs and NJ P.L. 2011 Chapter 78, which requires public employees (e.g. teachers, police, fire) to pay towards the cost of their health plans effective June 28, 2011. Given many high wage municipal employees retire when they reach 25 years of service, we have many years of pensions & healthcare coverage to pay for given the average life expectancy in the U.S of 78.7 years based on 2010 data. Class warfare has been waged by public sector unions, and they’re winning. So now taxpayers start questioning the cost of all of these promises we’ve made, and you call it class warfare ? Please.
Unions have decimated industries and are bankrupting cities. Anyone that has ever heard the phrase “jobs going overseas” has a union to thank. The price of labor needs to be driven by the free market, supply and demand. If you are a toll collector, you might want to consider changing jobs – sorry, we just don’t need that many of you anymore. If someone is willing to do what you do for less money, so be it. Today unions only exist primarily to fix the price of labor at artificially and unsustainably high levels and if nothing is done, Detroit is only a preview of what we’ll see in the next couple of years.
The unions had their place in this economy 100 years ago when they genuinely represented the best interests of middle class workers but their time has passed. Today unions exist to make sure that the weakest among them gets paid as much as the strongest. The days of guaranteed raises, full pensions in your 40’s and cheap healthcare for life are over. The sooner we come to grips with that as economy, the better off the economy will be.
The reason we have no manufacturing jobs in the usa is the unions killed it.
High wages, high benefits. Big retirements. See how well that worked out in the auto industry. (all of the subcontractor union plants that used to make paint, parts, tires, engine etc are all a fraction of their former size)
The remaining plants closed in the unionized ‘rust belt’ and moved south to where its a market based wage.
States with a high percentage of union workers are in deep shit financially. Look at Michigan, Ohio, Indiana etc.
Unions pushed the manufacturing jobs offshore.
They have no one to blame but themselves. greed aint so good.
#1 what planet are you from?
Its greedy CEOs and Corporate Board members and share holders that are bankrupting our cities. That’s where the blame for “jobs going overseas” belongs. Those greedy CEOs and Board members move manufacturing from our cities to overseas to increase their bottom line with cheap labor.
You clearly have no idea what your talking about.
#4 – If you could buy the same thing for less, wouldn’t you? If someone artificially inflated the price of something you could buy elsewhere for less wouldn’t you? That the way things work here on planet earth.
The shareholders make investments in order to make money.
If they can’t or don’t make money, they sell the shares or fire the CEO.
Its not the shareholder’s responsibility to roll over to union demands.
Greedy unions killed the golden goose.
The CEO and Board Members’s responsibility is to increase shareholder value, not play mommy to crybaby union members.
They make good money and pay lots of taxes to the government. Those taxes will pay your welfare check when your employer seeks reasonable wage and benefit concessions and your union says no.
By the way, these ‘greedy’ CEO’s are representing your union pension funds.
There’s blame all around in the private sector but public sector employees are by far more out of control. The ones at the top of the scale can be the most difficult, arrogant and entitled……cops, judges, administrators.
There will never be a public sector employee willing to take a pay cut.
The public sector employees will never participate in any sort of ‘give back’ unless they get MORE in return.
If they agree to ‘contribute’ more to their health care costs, they will get substantially more in salary.
Its a one way street.
They win. Taxpayers lose.
They’d rather blame kids. The same kids who will end up paying for all of the absurd promises we’ve made to public sector employees, and who will get no social security and higher taxes as thanks.
no one is blaming the “kids” they got what they voted for