600,000 Minnesotans lost their jobs this Spring. The $1.5 billion surplus is now a $2.5 billion deficit. DFL legislators want to give 50,000 state employees a 2% raise in July.My thought: there are 50,000 state employees? That’s a lot of bureaucrats. And it does not include all government employees – teachers, county or city – only state government. Are we sure that’s as lean as we can get? No fat to trim? None?The Republicans are holding strong, for now. Let the state employees strike. Give them a taste of their own medicine, going without pay like so many others.State employee unions hold Walz’ leash. Time to give it a yank.Joe Doakes
Being a public employee union makes you not only “essential”, but more valuable to Tim Walz’s Minnesota than the people who are paying the taxes to support them.
If Daudt and the House GOP give up their cards on the bonding bill, I may go back to the Libertarians after all.
So state employee unions are supposed to represent…(wait for it)…dues paying state employees.
Take a moment to wrap your mind around that concept.
Got it?
Soooooo…. please explain why every time the state offers to eliminate position by buying out employees with generous offers, the employee unions oppose the initiatives?
Let’s say I am a state employee who is close to retirement and the state is offering to cover health insurance, pension payments and a wad of cash to cover the time between now and when I turn 65 and go on medicare and social security and I go. WOW!!, I wanna do that…….and my union says, “Naw…..that works for you, but not for us.”
And for this, you pay them?
Thank God, the court said you don’t have to pay them anymore.
Greg;
Yup! 99% of all unions react like this. A friend of mine that worked in the HVAC industry for over 30 years, causing him to have surgery on both rotator cuffs, was offered early retirement by his union, but the leadership objected. After the union offered these to several members that were in their late 50s, they realized that they had no one left to train the foreigners that they recruited in the trade. For instance, welders are one of the highest demand trades, especially Tig welders. Here is where stupid union rules screwed them. Because they are accepting union pensions, they can’t work in any related capacity, even at home improvement stores, including coming back into the union, without losing pension benefits.
BH
a union friend who was ready to retire discovered that he could continue to work and keep his pension only if he moved to a different state.
win, win. move out of high tax MN, get the pension, and get new work.
I’ll admit it. I worked for the State of Minnesota for twenty years. I could have worked in the private sector (and did for 15 years) and I could have gone into business for myself – but I loved my job. I put in long hours, but was well compensated and the benefits were fantastic.
But here is the thing, I’d hear people who made $100K++ a year, had a great pension plan and job security, had tons of money in deferred comp and enjoyed 5 weeks of vacation a year – scream bloody murder about how horribly oppressed they were.
Go figure.
It strikes me that at a certain level, unions are only going to back down on wage/pension/etc.. demands when things get to the point where their very existence is threatened.
My family has thankfully been spared from the worst of the economic downturn so far–in fact a couple of my daughters have done very well by working in a nursing home and babysitting for those who can’t be in the office anymore–but there is a certain point where we need to accept that the gravy days of the 1960s are no longer around, and pretending they are is the fast road to bankruptcy.