Posted on 03/04/2010 7:55:44 AM PST by SmithL
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's request Tuesday for the California Supreme Court to take over seven key furlough lawsuits caught state employee unions off guard.
Schwarzenegger wants to legally leapfrog two appellate courts now considering those cases and go straight to the state's highest legal authority, sort of like skipping the playoffs and going straight to the Super Bowl.
Two of the most prominent state employee labor groups divided Wednesday over whether Schwarzenegger's request was a good idea. Service Employees Local 1000, still smarting from Schwarzenegger walking away from a concession-laden contract he negotiated with them last year, said Wednesday night that it will fight the move.
"Gov. Schwarzenegger had choices. He could have honored the contract we negotiated," said Local 1000 President Yvonne Walker.
Another possible reason for Local 1000's decision: Schwarzenegger's request includes freezing all other furlough litigation. That would circumvent Local 1000's successful legal strategy to pick away in the lower courts at the furlough process instead of the governor's furlough power.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
They need to double their pay. That will solve it all.
lol
Maybe he should try a 50% pay cut for union thugs.
/sarc
SEIU talking about honor. Now that is a downright knee slapper.
Despite budget cuts and layoff warnings, California still hiring and workforce still growing
http://www.sacbee.com/politics/story/2094403.html
The Sacramento Bee
Aug. 9, 2009
State job number on upswing despite recession
By George Avalos
California’s state government has managed to add thousands of jobs
during this past year, defying a mammoth budget deficit and a brutal
recession.
The job growth for state workers contrasts with the loss of 759,000
jobs in California’s private industry in the past 12 months:
http://www.mercurynews.com/topstories/ci_12984385?nclick_check=1&forced=true
not to mention gubermint employees and their pensions...
Reform advocates are spotlighting those with extravagant pensions
— $100,000 or more — as a way to get the public’s attention and
emphasize that the current system is unsustainable.
http://www.modbee.com/editorials/story/803636.html
Perhaps the real reason why public-sector pension costs have not been tackled is that the full bill has never been revealed to taxpayers.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13988606
From The Economist print edition
July 9, 2009
EDITORIAL
Dodging the bill-The great public-sector pension rip-off
JOIN a private-sector company these days and you will be very lucky if you get a pension linked to your final salary. In Britain almost three out of four companies that retain such schemes have closed them to new employees. The cost of paying such benefits, which are partly linked to inflation and offer payouts to surviving spouses, is simply too high now that many retirees are surviving into their 80s.
Yet most new public-sector employees in Britain and America continue to benefit from pensions linked to their salaries. The pension costs facing the public sector are roughly the same as those facing the private sector; their employees are likely to live just as long. But because of the presumed largesse of future taxpayers, governments seem under much less pressure to reduce their pension costs. In 2005 a reform package in Britain raised the retirement age for new state employees, but still left existing employees able to retire at 60.
Private sector can’t afford public sector employees
The Government Accounting Standards Board
instituted what is known as GASB 45, a reporting system requiring
cities, towns, states and other political entities to disclose
liabilities associated with other than pension post-employment
benefits (OPEB). This should be fully implemented by the end of the
2009 fiscal year.
This increased transparency will disclose an unbelievable $1.5
trillion in just unfunded health care obligations!
And that’s not all. USA Today reports that “The federal government
has unfunded obligations of $1.2 trillion to pay for retired health
care for retired federal workers ... and Medicare and Social
Security obligations pushing the total to more than $5 trillion.”
What happened to the good old days when a billion dollars was a lot
of money? Sooner or later taxpayers are going to wake up and things will get nasty.
This taxpayer backlash will not be entirely politically motivated.
Not all Democrats have government jobs. An overwhelming majority of
state, local and federal employees are Democrats, who, if legally
permitted, belong to public sector unions - a massive voting bloc of
22.5 million, including retirees. The federal government is the
nation’s largest single employer, even excluding the Postal Service.
And state and local governments employ more people than any other
sector of our economy.
It is no mystery the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports
74 percent of budget gaps are in blue states! And Florida is counted
as red, which is debatable after Obama’s ascension in 2008. New York
has a $13 billion budget deficit, a mere bagatelle compared to
California at $42 billion. The similarities between General Motors,
New York and California are striking: None can afford its employees.
The moral of this story is: If the private sector were forced to pay
these same salaries and benefits, we would have exported all our
jobs by now - along with all the companies that provide these jobs.
A good starting point to cure retirement benefit underfunding would
be to slowly shrink the size of our governments by taking attrition.
My suggestion would be to tell the court they must take this under consideration and also know that their own budgets will have to be cut considerably if the unions prevail.
I better start getting used to the taste of dog food.
And picking out my place under the overpass.
I’ve got twenty years to prepare for the Brave New World of retirement in the Age of Obama.
That is if we aren’t all sent to “Carousel” when our time comes.
This is why public sector unions need to be abolished.
It’s a conflict of interest to have the State working for more $ for the State on the taxpayer dime.
That’s in interesting point. Maybe that can be challanged in court by a bunch of irrate taxpayers. After all, they are using our money to demand more money from us.
This is all just rearranging deck chairs. The Ship of California is sinking, it’s taken on too much water (debt) to salvage, it just hasn’t gone completely under the waterline. Yet. But that’s inevitable now.
They ought to rename it "The Government Accounting Standards Panel." It fits what the public will do when they see the bill.
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