A friend of the blog, a member of a public employee union in the healthcare field, emails:
My silly colleagues are having a vote to authorize a strike (which will probably win).
Our contract that they’re negotiating already has won 6 months of maternity/paternity leave, 220 hours of PTO being carried over year to year, our company paying 85% of our health insurance, we get to remain salaried, so we don’t have to punch in/out, we got an increase in the number of people we can allow off for PTO per day, bereavement pay for extended family members, and the company has agreed to a guaranteed 2% raise for the next 3 years.
But, we’re voting to strike because the company isn’t agreeing to a $12 pay increase with a 6% pay raise yearly guaranteed.
Eye roll- glad we’re not as greedy as the company’s corporate heads- you know, the ones who per the union’s own words are at a ghastly 12 to 1 employee pay ratio…
220 hours of PTO carried over?
I’m trying to think if I’ve had 220 hours of PTO in the past two years.
A public employee union is complaining about the company’s corporate leaders…
Isn’t that the public?
220 hours carried over is only 4 1/2 weeks. That’s the least of my concerns with the proposal, though I do wonder how many hours of PTO they can bank before they stop accruing more.
I don’t know what their specific jobs are, but the salaried status would concern me. It’s convenient to not have to punch in and out, but it’s also very easy to end up putting in extra hours for no pay. I assume that it’s also just as likely for my coworkers to be coming in late and leaving early. If there aren’t repercussions for that behavior (cough, union protection, cough) there will definitely be others caught picking up the slack.
The 6 months parental leave is very generous (and presumably on top of whatever the Legislature mandates for everyone).
If I didn’t presume the workers were already overpaid compared to private sector counterparts the 6% pay raise would make sense considering inflation (thank you President Biden AND all of Washington DC politicians).
The term that really caught my eye was “bereavement leave for extended family members.” WTF!?!? More details on that one so I can know exactly how insane it is to pay non employees to go to a funeral.
Speaking of Sticking it to The Man…
Looks like Zelensky’s grift has seen its high water mark…#sad Maybe if he put some rips and burn marks in his Battle Tee Shirt?
news.yahoo(DOT)com/austrias-far-walks-zelenskiy-speech-210759293.html
Well, no worries, Bikebubble…this just means Weimerican Conservative Patriots™️ need to Simp Harder!
As stupid as all of this is, I’ve heard worse. Back in 1979, when I lived in Californication, my sales manager was from Australia. She told us that the unions there literally ran out of demands, so they actually went on strike to get a 30 minute “sex break”. Mind you, this was on top of the one hour lunches and three fifteen minute breaks that they were already guaranteed. This meant that out of an eight hour day, the worked five hours and fifteen minutes. Ultimately, that demand failed, as it should have, but it shows that union management is just as insane as the DemoCommies that they subsidize and support.
Public employee’s in the healthcare field? Having trouble parsing that one. HHS employees?
At any rate, my one experience with unions was through my father. He worked in a factory (that’s what he did to actually pay the bills, even back then small family farms were not financially sustainable…big ag was well on the way to choking them all out). The factory went closed shop. He opposed the move, but the union succeeded and he had to join to keep his job. He was very unhappy about it since, having had been with the factory for over 20 years, having a stellar reputation and relationship with the company, and having negotiated his own contract, he actually ended up with worse terms of employment under the union.
A couple of years later, the union went on strike. I can’t remember the exact conditions…I was in the Navy by then…the union officials assured the employees that the strike would get them what they wanted. The company flat told the union that the demands were too much and the factory would be losing money under the demanded terms. The union didn’t believe them and held out. The company shuttered the factory, moved all the equipment to Florida and everyone lost their jobs.
Another data point in proving that the minimum wage is actually $0 per hour no matter what the law says.
My dad was 55 at the time and didn’t want to start over, and had been saving money his whole life, so he retired; but luckily for him, his reputation with the company prompted them to hire him (along with a few other long-term employees) as a “consultant” to go to Florida for a few weeks at a time to help set up all the equipment and train the new employees how to use it. He ended up spending about 9 months in Florida over a two year span and made more money for 9 months of work than he would have working the full two years at his old job.
BTW: The factory never re-opened. The property and building sat for sale for a long time. It was eventually bought by a developer, the building was torn down and it was turned into condos for commuters into Indianapolis. That happened to a lot of the industry in the more rural communities in Indiana. Eventually, the state became a “right to work” state, but long after it was too late to save most of those industrial jobs. Now if you live in one of those small towns, you either commute for an hour to a city for work, or you have a job that requires repetition of the question “would you like fries with that?” throughout your work day.
I work for IT for a small agricultural company with offices around the world. During a recent conference call with my colleagues in the DSM metro and another colleague in the Toronto metro, they were bemoaning the supposed Dickensian cruelty of the US when it comes to time off for Mom and Dad when children are born. Our employer is pretty generous in my opinion, allowing dads to take paternity leave for up to 12 weeks of FMLA leave per year, 6 of which is paid. Moms can take up to 16 weeks, of which I believe 12 is paid. My Canadian colleague was telling how Canadian law permits her daughter to take 12-18 months of maternity leave. It’s not at full salary level, but it is mandated.
Because I have strong feelings about discussing politics at work, I endeavor to refocus on the work we’re supposed to be doing. But us all being technically-adept people, I’m amazed at the enlarged sense of entitlement, that the government should mandate our employer to pay us to pop out kids. I’d point out our employer hired us to do a specific type of work that brings value. Employers may choose to offer benefits such as paid parental leave to attract and retain talent, but that’s a business decision. Mandating paid parental leave invades the employment contract between employer and employee.
Unsurprisingly, one of my company’s offices in Canada closed during 2020.
Sailor, your story is one of many. It all ends the same way… every… single… time… in the private sector. In public sector, that is a much, much different story. You see, you can never run out of taxpayer’s money, it is not like management has to “make” it. YOU can ALWAYS afford to pay public employees more… always.
Many such cases Sailor
The term that really caught my eye was “bereavement leave for extended family members.” WTF!?!? More details on that one so I can know exactly how insane it is to pay non employees to go to a funeral.
I think that means paid leave for the employee to attend non-immediate family funerals. Immediate being spouse, child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, etc. It might open up to 2nd cousin once removed or “my best friend’s uncle”, etc.