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Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Public Employee Unions Should Stop The Deception

    Over the weekend I saw a commercial sponsored by the State of New Jersey teacher, police, and firefighter unions.  The commercial made an emotional appeal to citizens claiming that the budget cuts being proposed by Governor Christie would mean that these poor beat up unions would no longer be able to provide their communities with the educational and public safety services that local communities so desperately need.  The advertisement was so disingenuous and so self serving that if I was independently wealthy I think I would have thrown something through the TV screen.

    The fact of the matter is that yes we want and need teachers.  Yes we want and need public safety employees.  What we are tired of however is paying $100,000/year salaries to 180 day a year gym teachers, art teachers, music teachers and other non essential employees who essentially work part time.  We are also tired of paying policemen and women $100,000+ salaries who hide in the weeds to make sure that we their employers do not fail to achieve zero inertia at some stupid stop sign.  And we are tired of paying six figure retirement pensions to police who retire at the age of 45 who kite their benefits by inflating their overtime to achieve high salaries during their last few years of employment.

    Just so I give equal time to firefighters, they love to talk about what great heroes they are and why they deserve highly inflated early retirement packages.  From what I've seen, and I know this is not politically correct to say, the real heroes when it comes to residential and commercial fires are the insurance adjusters who make decisions that allow home owners and commercial property owners to obtain the finances to rebuild.

    Teachers unions simply refuse to renegotiate contracts that pay gym teachers the same amount of money as advanced physics teachers.  Let's get real.  At $100,000/yr most stay at home housewives would be happy to teach a bunch of 10 year olds to play kickball for $30,000/yr and consider it to be a part time job.

    The truth is that none of these unions are interested in the education of our children.  None of them are interested in public safety.  All they are concerned with is advocating unwarranted high salaries, unwarranted high retirement pay, and taxpayer paid benefits for their employees.  Those days are gone.  Over the last 20-30 years and while public unions have continued to get their 3% and 5% annual increases, those of us in the private sector have had to sacrifice benefits, salary increases, and put in longer work hours just to stay employed.  It's time to pay the piper since there simply are not enough of us around to keep supporting all these selfish self serving jerks.

1 comment:

  1. Check out this link for more information.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/business/economy/21pension.html

    ReplyDelete

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