Gubmint Bailout Update: Detroit Wants Its Slice of the Pie

Charles Krauthammer talks some sense on the subject:

With almost 5 million workers supported by the auto industry, Democrats are pressing for a federal rescue. But the problems are obvious.

First, the arbitrariness. Where do you stop? Once you’ve gone beyond the financial sector, every struggling industry will make a claim on the federal treasury. What are the grounds for saying yes or no?

The criteria will inevitably be arbitrary and political. The money will flow preferentially to industries with lines to Capitol Hill and the White House. To the companies heavily concentrated in the districts of committee chairmen. To clout. Is this not precisely the kind of lobby-driven policymaking that Obama ran against?

Second is the sheer inefficiency. Saving Detroit means saving it from bankruptcy. As we have seen with the airlines, bankruptcy can allow operations to continue while helping shed fatally unsupportable obligations. For Detroit, this means release from ruinous wage deals with their astronomical benefits (the hourly cost of a Big Three worker: $73; of an American worker for Toyota: $48), massive pension obligations, and unworkable work rules such as “job banks,” a euphemism for paying vast numbers of employees not to work.

The point of the Democratic bailout is to protect the unions by preventing this kind of restructuring. Which will guarantee the continued failure of these companies, but now they will burn tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. It’s the ultimate in lemon socialism.

Calif. Government To Taxpayers: Fuck You

The San Francisco Chronicle reports this morning that the state payroll has soared in recent years. How much? Are you sitting down?

In Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's first four years, the total bill for state workers' salaries jumped by 37 percent, compared with a 5 percent increase in the preceding four years under then-Gov. Gray Davis, a Chronicle analysis of state payroll records shows.

One month before Schwarzenegger took office in November 2003, just eight state employees earned more than $200,000 a year working in the core state government, which excludes universities and the Legislature. In April of this year, there were nearly a thousand, according to records. [Emphasis added]

And the number of state employees making six-figure salaries has more than doubled since 2003, to nearly 15,000. Meanwhile, the number of state workers has grown by 26,000 under Schwarzenegger after being cut by Davis, who was recalled from office in the midst of a severe budget crisis.

What's causing the rise? Labor unions have a hammerlock on the government:

Some of the pay increases in recent years have been out of Schwarzenegger's control, including previously negotiated pay raises for some employee unions and court-ordered pay hikes for medical workers in the state prison system that are estimated to have cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.

Also fueling the spurt in payroll growth: salary increases for employees in a few politically powerful labor unions, including the state's prison guards, as well as pay hikes for workers in the upper echelons of state government. Elected members of the Legislature, who will decide in the coming weeks how to resolve the state's $17.2 billion deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1, also received increases last year.

United Workers Association Reminds Us All of the True Meaning of Labor Day

Worry no more -- or at least not for another 6 days -- the hunger strike on behalf of Maryland Stadium Authority trash-picker-uppers has been called off. The Sun reports:

The stadium workers who were planning to launch a hunger strike today for higher pay instead postponed the protest until Saturday -- citing positive remarks from state officials.

A written statement issued by the United Workers Association said that "due to positive signs coming from both the governor and the chairman of the Maryland Stadium Authority" the hunger strike was being postponed.

See here for past TtP coverage of the UWA and their hunger strike shenanigans. Full article here, complete with protest picture goodness.

Slave Driver Peter Angelos

United Workers Association, a.....You know what, I'll let the group explain itself. From the United Workers website:[emphasis mine, spelling mistakes not]

The United Workers was founded by homeless day laborers in an abandoned firehouse turned into a homeess shelter. The group started through a series of discussions about the root causes of poverty. Workers asked questions and challenged even our own assumptions about the causes of poverty. Homelessness is often demoralizing, especially when blame is misdirected at the victims of poverty and not at those who benefit from poverty.

[...]

Slavery was a word that came up a lot. Wages barely enough to feed yourself, let alone to support a family on, are slave-wages. Working to survive is slavery. We recognized that the system itself, like the slavery system, was broken. It was broken and was breaking us.

Humm...I'm noticing a trend here. Well, I'm sure they have good cause to compare their working situation to that of slavery. Enter the Baltimore Sun:

Luis Larin once fasted six days to protest rising electricity rates in his native Guatemala.

Now a day laborer in Baltimore, Larin is among 11 current and former temporary workers who will begin a hunger strike Sept. 3 to secure higher wages for those who pick up the trash at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

[...]

The hunger strike announced yesterday is the latest move by the United Workers Association to pressure the Maryland Stadium Authority to meet its demand for better pay.

Camden Yard workers typically earn $7 an hour. They're asking for at least Baltimore's living wage of $9.62, even though the city's minimum wage doesn't apply to the workers since the stadium is state owned.

Ahhh!!!! The horrors of slaving away, picking up trash for $7/hr....The outrage!! Well, if that isn't tantamount to slavery then I don't know what is. Slavery. It's like slavery. Get it? Slavery.

Full article here.

There's Power (to Bilk) in a Union

Boston's Local 12, which like all unions fights for the little guy, is pissed off at Patriots QB Tom Brady. The union is picketing the greatest NFL winner of his generation because Brady, who will win his fourth Super Bowl this February, didn't hire union workers to re-do his swank Back Bay pad.

Local 12 captain Tom Koney complains that Brady "gets paid millions for what he does but he doesn’t believe in paying plumbers a decent wage."

So what's a "decent wage", according to the union?

The picket line was aimed at flushing out Tom’s plumbing contractor A&K Plumbing of Revere which, the plumbers say, doesn’t pay the “established community standard” wage of $61.75 an hour plus benefits* and does not employ any women or minorities. A&K was put in the Brady pipeline by the general contractor, Boston’s Metric Corp.

"Established community standard" my ass. That's robbery, Mr. Koney. Robbery, you lazy, anti-competitive piece of crap. More here.

*Emphasis (and coffee inadvertently spit on my computer screen) all mine.

The Tax Revolt of 2017: Public Sector Unions Versus Taxpayers

In deals that are mainly hidden from public view, elected officials at all levels of government continue to curry political favor and union endorsements by granting public sector unions generous retirement health and pension benefits that far exceed those available to private sector employees and most taxpayers. Younger taxpayers, in fact, typically have no pension or health benefits supplied by their employer.

The Washington Examiner, in an article entitled "Metro gives staff free ride to retirement," reported today that,

Unlike most American workers, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority employees receive handsome pensions without ever contributing a penny to their pension fund. [I would add that most private sector employees don't have pensions at all, never mind not contributing to them.] The annual pension payments, some unusually generous, are funded entirely by Metro riders and taxpayers...

While paying 50 percent more for overtime work is not unusual, Local 689’s contract is remarkable in that it mandates that overtime hours be included in the compensation totals used to calculate an employee’s future pension payments.

The classic rationale for paying public sector employees out-of-market benefits is that they make so much less in salary than their private sector counterparts. But that rationale has been turned on its head.

A recent Examiner report, for example, found that hundreds of hourly Metro employees, including bus drivers and train operators, make six-figure incomes when overtime is included, which is significantly higher than the regional average for the private sector.

This means that metro bus and train drivers make more than the average earner does in the Washington region, which includes 4 of the top ten US counties in terms of income.

Stories like this are cropping up everywhere. Today the WSJ had an op-ed [subscription only] describing not only Texas' huge public retiree obligation but also a move on their part to hide it from the public.

Retiree health benefits amount to an exceptionally cushy deal for America's public-sector workers. Texas, for example, not untypically pays 100% of health insurance premiums for state employees who can retire in their early 50s. Unlike pensions, these other retiree benefits generally are financed on a pay-as-you-go basis.

These benefits impose huge and growing future liabilities on taxpayers -- liabilities that states and localities have long hidden from public view, deceiving citizens about the true costs. And the nation's second largest state is now poised to perpetuate the deceit. Last week the Texas Senate completed passage of a bill that would allow the state and its local governments to avoid funding long-term obligations for retiree health insurance and other non-pension benefits. If Gov. Rick Perry signs the measure, Texas will simply defy a key provision of established government accounting standards. This would be stunning setback for efforts to improve transparency and accountability in government finances around the country.

Ration needs to be infused into this debate. It should be recognized that most American workers and taxpayers, especially younger ones, do not have pensions or lifetime insurance benefits and that government workers ought to be:

1) paid at a fair market rate for their labor, whereby Metro bus drivers with only a high school education would not earn more on average than some of the best educated and highest paid people in the country; and

2) required to contribute to their own pensions and pay a part of their health insurance costs.

That is a minimum and it should probably be much more reality-based. If governments don't do something about these future promises and their hidden costs, we will see a system of haves and have-nots, and the haves will be government employees and everyone else will be footing the bill.

The Elite of 2020: Public Sector Employees

At some point in the not-so-distant future, there will be social unrest when the first private sector generation without pensions starts to retire and realizes that they cannot afford to support via property and income taxes the sweet deals that governments made to public sector employees, who have generous pensions and lifetime health insurance benefits. To kill the argument that public sector employees make less money than their private sector peers, public sector employees make twice in total comp than they do, according to Cato's Chris Edwards.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released data this month showing that the average compensation for the 1.8 million federal civilian workers in 2005 was $106,579 -- exactly twice the average compensation paid in the U.S. private sector: $53,289. If you consider wages without benefits, the average federal civilian worker earned $71,114, 62 percent more than the average private-sector worker, who made $43,917.

Some recent news examples of excess government largess that we do or will have to fund include:

-- Federal workers get a $105 per month public transit allowance. Some of them don't use the benefit and instead sell it in eBay for cash.

--Federal employees also often get free parking. In DC, a reserved downtown parking space on average costs $360 per month. The sting on the workers selling their Metrocards on eBay also found that many of those employees also had free parking.

-- Metro workers' pensions are based on their three highest-paying years, including overtime. Not surprisingly, they book a ton of overtime. The result:

Overtime has a significant impact on long-term costs because pensions are based on the total number of hours worked. As a result, some retirees receive pension checks bigger than the base pay they received while working.

One could go from municipality to state around this country and find that all jurisdictions are dealing with the issue of how to fund union contracts that guarantee benefits that are basically a redistribution of wealth from private sector employees, who have no pensions or health insurance, to public servants.

Unless this bomb is defused, taxes of all types will have to go up, way up, to fund unprecedented public sector benefits, just as the first generation of people without any benefits hits retirement.

I Couldn't Post this Fast Enough

Just when you thought teacher unions couldn't repulse you more than they already do, they throw shit like this out there.[emphasis mine]

The head of the Baltimore Teachers Union called the city school system's contract proposal for teachers and aides "insulting, degrading and downright disrespectful" last night as about 40 union members rallied outside a school board meeting and accused the board of failing to negotiate in good faith.

[...]

"These negotiations have been an insult to us," said Marietta English, co-president of the union. "What they're asking is ridiculous."

At the rally, she led chants of "enough is enough." She compared the system's treatment of teachers to the way slaves were treated, saying, "What happened on the plantation when the slaves had enough?"

Well, not only were slaves not paid and beaten at their masters call; and let's not forget that they were called slaves because they weren't free, you know, to make any choices about their life. They also worked during the summer months...picking cotton in sweltering heat, again, against their will and with out compensation. But never mind all that, being asked to work an extra 55 minutes a day (one of the sticking points in the negotiation) is tantamount to American slavery. Great analogy.

What else are they all fired up about?

English said she is also furious about the involuntary transfers of several teachers and aides at five schools being run under a new partnership with Towson University.

Towson officials said that about 60 teachers at the five schools -- four in Cherry Hill and one in Morrell Park -- have been asked to transfer or are volunteering to go to other schools next year because they are not meeting Towson's goals for reform.

In arguments regrading improving our schools, the ability and current lack of ability to fire underperforming teachers is often dismissed as something that would prove to be a minor improvement. I'm not sure about that. But what I do know, is that the unions always choose those battles to fight the hardest.

Full article here.

Selfish Teachers Refuse to Teach

If I didn't like my job, I would find a better job, give at least two weeks notice, and quit. What I wouldn't do is act like a big baby, refuse to come in, and call some union thugs to prevent me from being fired for not doing the job I'm paid to do. But then I'm not a West Virginia school teacher.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Teachers demanding better pay refused to show up for work Wednesday and forced the cancellation of classes in at least 12 counties.

Lawmakers last week approved a 3.5 percent pay raise for the state's nearly 20,000 teachers, but the educators' union said it was not enough to keep West Virginia competitive with the rest of the country.

West Virginia teachers' salaries now rank 47th in the nation, according to the West Virginia Education Association. State officials said the average teacher earned $41,388 last year and has about 18 years of experience.

First, they have summers off. So the real average salary is around $50,000 (what they would earn if they worked full time like everyone else). That seems pretty good to me. The median income level of a two-person family in West Virginia is $37,493. Another way of saying this is single West Virginia teachers are financially better off than most married couples in the state. Sounds pretty fortunate to me. This doesn't even count fringe benefits, like having sex with underage students.

Senate Democrats Vote to Blow-Up Innocent Americans

OK, not literally; but essentially. I can't imagine a more treasonous act they could take then to side with Al Qaeda and other terrorists who have a stake in protecting incompetent and corrupt airport screeners from being fired. I hope Republicans stand their ground on this one. I don't want to die just so Clinton and Obama can get a little more union cash in their campaign coffers, which is all this is about - selling out our national security for personal gain. 45,000 Americans will be forced to support Democratic candidates through union dues, while thousands die when airlines are blown up.

The Senate voted Tuesday to give 45,000 airport screeners the same union rights as border patrol, customs and immigration agents, despite a veto threat from the White House.
[...]
The House passed a similar anti-terrorism bill with the same union provision for airport screeners in an indication of organized labor's strength with Democrats now running Congress.

Republicans vowed to strike the union provision when negotiators sit down to merge the House and Senate bills together to implement recommendations of the 9/11 commission previously rejected by Congress.
[...]
It's absolutely absurd," said Sen. Richard Burr R-N.C. "Terrorists don't go on strike. Terrorists don't call their union to negotiate before they attack."

Well said, Rep. Burr.

Full story here.

Unions Mafia Wants to Eliminate Secret Ballots and Free Speech

I expect the Democrats to be pro-union (at least one political party should be.) But there's a big difference between protecting the rights of workers by supporting unions and repressing the rights of workers by supporting unions. Do I have to explain this, Pelosi?

George Will (like he does so often) hits the nail on the head, stomps the cockroach to death, hits a homerun (pick your metaphor) on the Orwellian-named Employee Free Choice Act (hint: the legislation takes away employee free choice).