Posted on 07/30/2010 7:17:48 AM PDT by Mobile Vulgus
The Engineers and Architects Association, a 48,000 member public employees union in L.A., has come under attack from the politically active Service Employees International Union (SEIU) for having the civic sense to realize that the high times of ever rising pay at the taxpayer's expense is coming to an end.
In a deal about to be voted on, the Engineers and Architects Association agreed to present to its members a new contract that would require them to pay a whopping extra $10 per visit to the doctor (that will put it up to $20 per visit). Also gone would be the $15 a month to "enhance their life insurance and disability insurance" paid by the city. Finally, union members would have to pay five percent of their monthly healthcare premiums.
In the deal, the city proposed to reduce furlough days from 26 to ten.
As it stands right now, union members that work for the city of L.A. pay nothing toward premiums for their healthcare.
All of this is rather weak budget cutting. The requests upon the engineers union are entirely reasonable. In fact, most would agree that the cuts don't go far enough because the pension that these employees are scheduled to get still amounts to $56,000 a year -- more than most taxpayers make at the peak of their work career. The estimated median income of citizens of the city is only $48,882 a year yet these poor taxpayers will be paying its city engineers and architects $56,000 annually upon retirement!
Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...
Engineers and architects need a freaking union? At least they seem to have a bit of common sense.
“Engineers and architects”
that explains much of it. They are not liberal artists, they have real professions, where logic and productivity account for their job description, unlike the uneducated or “feel gooders” who have no logic.
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