{"id":5220,"date":"2011-12-16T07:11:46","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T12:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=5220"},"modified":"2011-12-27T09:42:13","modified_gmt":"2011-12-27T14:42:13","slug":"do-union-members-in-essex-county-really-want-their-birthdays-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/12\/16\/do-union-members-in-essex-county-really-want-their-birthdays-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Do union members in Essex County really want their birthdays off?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Essex County officials have been locked in a fierce labor dispute with union leaders, who have declined to give up a 4% pay increase next year, despite the country&#8217;s deep deficits.<\/p>\n<p>In the<a href=\"http:\/\/pressrepublican.com\/0100_news\/x1181957671\/Essex-County-union-pay-freeze-not-likely\"> Plattsburgh Press-Republican<\/a>, Lohr McKinstry explores all this.\u00a0 One detail of Lohr&#8217;s article jumped out at me.<\/p>\n<p>He reports that union leaders apparently had five demands, in order to reopen next year&#8217;s contract for negotiation.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;[Essex County chairman Randy Douglas] said the county might have agreed to at least three of the five union  stipulations, including one that union workers get their birthdays off.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Union officials didn&#8217;t respond to the Press-Republican&#8217;s request for an interview, but this left me really curious &#8212; even a little stumped.<\/p>\n<p>Given the economic crisis, and the serious difficulties facing both government and private sector workers, do public employee unions like CSEA think it&#8217;s appropriate for their workers to get a holiday on their birthdays?<\/p>\n<p>Is that really one of their top demands?<\/p>\n<p>And would county officials actually agree to such a thing?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never heard of government agencies or private sector employers viewing birthdays as a work holiday, but maybe I&#8217;m missing something.<\/p>\n<p>As always, your comments welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Essex County officials have been locked in a fierce labor dispute with union leaders, who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[10,5701,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5220"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}