How Unions Demonize Opponents
By Warner Todd Huston Posted in Liberals — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
There is an interesting little report about a city Supervisor in Amherst, New York and how the city employee unions have demonized him since being elected as a reformer 2 years ago. It is an object lesson in how unions will demonize instead of work with anyone.
When Mohan took office 2 years ago as a reformer, he clearly specified that he wanted union contracts -- a huge financial burden for most municipalities -- retooled to pare back rich pay packages and fringe benefits.
“Someone has to speak for the people,” he said at last week’s Town Board meeting, where he opposed a police union contract that ultimately passed with only Mohan voting “no.”
Sounds like a fine public official to me! And one thing is sure, the unions sure aren't speaking for the taxpayers in ANY city in ANY state of the Union. All they want is to rip off the taxpayers as much as possible.
Naturally, Supervisor Mohan's success at opposing union thugs and paring back thei ill-gotten gains has made him a target of unions.
But the town’s union leaders describe Mohan’s comments as outrageous, offensive and, in some cases, “outright lies.”
In any case, we here at the blog wish Supervisor a long, long, union agitating career.
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the reported factually inaccurate statements are true. You can't be stupid in dealing with public employee unions and if you attack them, you'd better be right and you'd better be prepared for the fact that you will have NO friends in the government or media.
At the bottom, his criticisms are probably warranted. Once a small government, city or county level, is unionized, the unions will soon own the city council. Cop unions have enormous power, the greatest of which is the arrest they don't make or the pictures the union president has in his safe. Cop contracts usually are hideously expensive; unionized cops are among the most secure and best paid public employees. In a unionized state like NY, the only valid comparison or basis for criticism is how a government's cops compare in cost to those of similar sized governments.
The bit about the city not paying for retiree pay and benefits is misleading. Most states, and I'm pretty sure NY is one, provide an overarching public employee retirement systen in which political subdivisions may or must participate. In some systems, the employer pays the whole contribution into the state system, in others its is a joint employer-employee contribution. When an employee retires, his pay and benefits come from the state retirement fund, not from his original employer, but that employer has paid a sum up front that the actuaries have determined to be adequate to support the retirees' pay and benefits for a projected lifespan.
Likewise the leave payout statements are misleading. Almost all public employees have a paid leave scheme of some sort. Most have an accrual of x days of personal or annual leave and of x days of sick leave each year. Others accrue personal leave that can be used for either purpose. Almost all governments allow separating employees to cash out their unused personal or annual leave, it's basically just vacation time that they didn't take over the course of their career (assuming their time off was accurately accounted for, not always a good assumption). Some employers allow a separating employee to redeem some or even all of their unused sick leave as either cash or as a service credit to their retirement. The rationale is that being able to redeem or receive credit for unused sick leave is an incentive to reduce absence. You can attach as much credibilty to that rationale as you like. I personally believe that cash value leave does provide a great incentive to long time employees, but they don't miss much work anyway. It means nothing to younger or more junior employees, the ones you're most likely to have attendance problems with.
If this supervisor is to have a "long, long union agitating career," he'd better get better at agitating them.
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