Morning Read: Pay freeze for public workers?
Earlier this month, lawmakers in St. Lawrence County approved raises for public workers, drawing the ire of some legislators this from the Watertown Daily Times.
“I’d love to be able to tell everyone it’s Christmas every day,” said Legislator David W. Forsythe, R-Lisbon. “To give so great of a pay raise in these times, I can’t support it.”
Now there is growing talk of a statewide freeze on public-sector raises, as New York grapples with a $10 billion deficit.
This from the Associate Press, quoted on WNBZ’s website:
A month after President Barack Obama proposed a two-year standstill on the pay of 2 million federal employees, New York’s Conference of Mayors last week suggested the state to freeze on all public sector wages.
The state School Boards Association, meanwhile, sought state authority to stop raises now guaranteed under law through annual “step” increases even when a labor contract expires.
The concept infuriates many union leaders.
On Thursday night, the Sullivan County Legislature froze salaries despite labor contracts that called for 4-percent raises on Jan. 1.
“The legislators have declared war on workers of Sullivan County by doing what they’ve done,” Adrian Huff of Teamster’s Local 445 told the Times Herald-Record of Middletown.
In this week’s Adirondack Daily Enterprise, the editorial writers urged the CSEA union to compromise with officials at the Olympic Regional Development Authority on a new contract:
The CSEA says its workers haven’t received raises in years. There are many workers throughout the country who can say the same thing.
Some workers who have lost their jobs, including those in the 891 state jobs that Gov. David Paterson has decided to ax, would gladly forgo raises just to have a job.
So what do you think? Should public employees be satisfied with the jobs they have, given the state’s precarious fiscal situation?
Or should teachers, police officers, and thousands of other professionals be in line for raises, even if that means higher income and property taxes?
Tags: economy, nys budget, politics
I’m all for working class people being well paid, but the reality is that our state and federal governments are in deep trouble.
It doesn’t help that Obama and the Congress just sank us deeper into debt but much of the trouble we are in stems from a long-time Republican strategy to spend the government into debt so that they could starve it into the smaller size they desired. Bush tax cuts and two wars have devastated this country and more important, ordinary people.
I don’t know how a municipality or the State can void a contract. I mean “how” as in the legal mechanism. It’s a valid contract made in good faith that hasn’t been violated by either side. The gov’ts may be stuck with what they foolishly agreed to. Voiding the contracts would result is massive protests, strikes perhaps, by those affected that are allowed by law to strike.
What I picture happening is that services will be cut, jobs eliminated and probably some consolidation will occur. I don’t expect wholesale carnage to CSEA or any of the other major union groups. Way too much political clout for the politicians to risk their wrath. The non-union or smaller groups, the smaller municipalities will probably see more outright job elimination. Taxes are going up.
The really sad part to me is that as soon as there’s the slightest sign of improvement you can bet that some fool somewhere will go right back to the tried and true methods that got us here today.
Knuck, I would counter your charge by saying that much of our problem comes from the long term strategy of the left of massive public spending programs. I would also add that for the past couple decades at least the Republicans have taken part in this. The lesson I take away is that massive public spending programs are not a good idea, that gov’t cannot be trusted to act responsibly and that more gov’t breeds more problems.
The unions made concessions to the governor in return for a ‘no lay off’ promise which he is now violating. Add that to demands for a pay freeze or cut at the same time they are passing out tax breaks for corporations and the rich and it’s little wonder that working folks feel as though they are getting the short end of the stick.
Yes! Freeze all the wages and salaries of all public employees and contractors.
If the unions don’t like it, fire everyone like Regan did with the air traffic controllers, destroy the unions and start hiring new workers at a better deal.
khl:
“Bush tax cuts and two wars have devastated this country and more important, ordinary people.”
I know it’s tough, but it’s time to face reality. They are now Obama’s tax cuts and Obama’s wars.
James Bullard,
“The unions made concessions to the governor in return for a ‘no lay off’ promise which he is now violating.”
Absolutely false. The unions made no “concessions”- only a pledge not to oppose tier V for future employees- and the governor is not laying employees off until the beginning of next year, which is not a violation of the pledge.
In truth, a pay freeze is a tiny baby step in the right direction. All public employees should be required to contribute 3% of salary to the pension fund – right now public employees contribute a pathetic 1 dollar for every 7 dollars that the state and localities contribute- and required to pay for their own health insurance once they retire- right now some localities pay for 100% of the health insurance for part-time retirees. Time to pull the plug on the entitled class’s gravy train.
Scratchy, can you provide a link to that info please? I never paid much attention, but I thought my contribution was quite a bit higher than that, not that I had any say in it anyway.
Bret has a good point about “voiding a contract”. Even if you were a union president, and you thought your members would go along with it, Im not sure how you would do it (turning down a cost of living increase, for example). Probably need a vote – and you would have to be pretty sure of yourself and your members before you would even try.
But the big problem no one is facing is the “promises we cant keep” part. Those are the pensions and future health care of retirees (and present employees) – especially of municipal employees, but employees in general. Whether or not someone gets a 3% cost of living raise or contributes 3% to pension (or 25% to health care) is really symbolic. The bottom line is what the employee costs the employer. How much the employee “contributes” is pre-tax vs post tax.
http://hr.cornell.edu/benefits/retirement/nysers.html
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20101212/NEWS01/12120371/Police-firefighters-swell-pensions-with-overtime
Though my understanding is that police and firefighters are in a different system, so their pension contributions may be different. And the legislature eliminated pension contributions requirements for employees with 10 years of service about 10 years ago when the stock market was going wild. Did they really think it would continue to go up, up, and away? Apparently.
I guess my problem isn’t with pensions, per se, it’s just that I think that employees should be required to contribute more to the system. 2.5 billion in taxpayer contributions versus 273.3 million in employee contributions is not, in my view, sustainable, especially given how costs are expected to rise and rise.
Again – I still dont see how pre-tax vs post-tax makes a difference. What would make a big difference is putting a fixed limit on the benefit part, and saying that the employee would have to pick up any increases in health care premiums that occur during the life of the contract.
The problem is not with the Unions. The unions are doing what they are supposed to do and that is fight like hell for their members to get the most they can get. They have one role and that is of an advocate for union members it is not wrong of them to take everything they can get.
The problem is with the public officials who do not advocate at contract negotiation time for their constituents who are the taxpayers. You can’t or shouldn’t go back on contracts already in place, what you do however is in the next round negotiate like it actually mattered like we were facing a fiscal crisis.
I don’t know; no one is going to take our so called fiscal crisis seriously as long as they keep handing out raises and Cadillac benefits and maybe we shouldn’t take it seriously they always seem to find a way to pay or to borrow to cover the expenses.
WOW! I guess I should have been a Poughkeepsie fire fighter!
How much does Ted Blazer take in annually after he cleverly left ORDA and was begged to return by the board – and rewarded with a significantly increased compensaiton package. My point? Why is the scrutinty of public sector compensation focused on the modest salaries of the rank and file workers and not on the political appointees who make 3 or 4 times that the average salary?
JDM the point of looking at history is to not repeat it. Yes Obama renewed the Bush tax cuts and yes he has maintained the wars. The point however is that the Conservative agenda was to starve government. So instead of trying to maintain a budget that remains stable over a long period of time and averaging out the highs and lows policies were put in place when we had a balanced budget and relatively good economy that made the crash much worse than it should have been.
My point isn’t to pin blame. My point is to look at what happened and try to do a better job for the future.
Lily,
I’m for scrutinizing all government salaries. Moreover, it’s not the salaries that are the cost drivers; it’s pension and health care costs. Very few private sector employees get the pension and retiree health care benefits that NY public employees get.
scratchy, we could all save a lot of money if we institute a single-payer universal health-care system. The it isn’t the haves vs the have-nots.
We could also save a lot of money if we outlawed all health care plans/insurance. The difference lays is whether you believe a bigger system with much higher costs is better than a tiny system with lower costs. IOW, if we’d never had health care plans (it’s not insurance after all) in the first place we wouldn’t have the high costs we have now.
The problem I see with single payer is that people will demand more and more and more and the system will just become another money pit, a black hole swallowing more and more and more money. If you limit/ration care it’s still going to be the haves and have nots.
In the end I don’t believe there is a simple answer for this issue.
Bret – you have it backwards. The single payer systems are all much much better at controlling costs. The system we have – the decisions are between the doctor and the patient, with no thought about costs – leads, quite naturally to higher and higher costs. Its supply and demand with no limits on demand. The single payer systems all do cost controls by limiting supply (rationing).
Oh, so we get single payer, set up a rationing system and some death panels, crop off the elderly and infirm, costs drop and every ones happy.
Dang, I always get these things cornfused,
“The point however is that the Conservative agenda was to starve government”
But how could that be given that government expanded greatly during all of the last administrations.
Government has done great under Republicans and Democrats its the one constant in our political system.
yep we need death panels too
We have death panels now.