Posted on 06/01/2014 2:42:57 PM PDT by Kaslin
Public sector unions are out of control. They are extracting wealth from the productive economy and playing taxpayers for chumps. Simple as that. Whether the it’s the teachers unions, the municipal unions, the SEIU, the workers at the myriad of of alphabet soup agencies, the assumption is that somehow taxpayers work for government employees, for the low level cronies. Our money is supposed to fund their pensions and above market salaries. We owe it to them.
The average federal worker makes over $120,000 in total compensation. A comparable private sector worker? About $50,000.
This should not be. To some degree we need a basic civil service, but what we have now amounts in many ways to a crony cancer on the country and on our economy. Trust me, I’ve spent a good part of my life in Northern Virginia (government worker and government contractor central – also the wealthiest area of the USA) just outside of Washington DC and these workers really do think you work for them. No joke.
Let the taxpayer funded workers and retirees wail away in the comments section below but its time to cut the fat deeply. With an axe if need be.
Sorry but government should cost the real economy as little as possible and it costs WAY too much now.
(From The Wall Street Journal)The Federal Labor Relations Authority, the agency that mediates federal labor disputes, earlier this month ruled in favor of this union president, in a dispute over whether she need bother to show up at her workplace—the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Martinsburg, W.Va. According to FLRA documents, this particular VA employee is 100% “official time”—D.C. parlance for federal employees who work every hour of every work day for their union, at the taxpayer’s expense.
In April 2012, this, ahem, VA “employee” broke her ankle and declared that she now wanted to do her nonwork for the VA entirely from the comfort of her home. Veterans Affairs attempted a compromise: Perhaps she could, pretty please, come in two days a week? She refused, and complained to the FLRA that the VA was interfering with her right to act as a union official. The VA failed to respond to the complaint in the required time (perhaps too busy caring for actual veterans) and so the union boss summarily won her case.
The VA battle is only just starting, but any real reform inevitably ends with a fight over organized labor. Think of it as the federal version of Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and other states where elected officials have attempted to rein in the public-sector unions that have hijacked government agencies for their own purpose. Fixing the VA requires first breaking labor’s grip, and the unions are already girding for that fight.
For more from Nick Sorrentino, visit AgainstCronyCapitalsim.org
Reform the VA? Forget about it!!
Thanks for posting.
I had never thought about the Government Union angle in this scandal before.
It’s one of the big reasons the VA is so inefficient and slow. It’s practically impossible to fire a janitor for slacking, let alone an administrator.
Unions were my first thought when democrats refused to vote on the 3 page VA accountability bill. It would have made it easier to fire employees.
The VA is total socialism.... the vets ought to be able to go to private doctors..
WAIT.... there are no more private Doctors..
ITS SINGLE PAYER NOW.... gov’t controlled..
Total socialism not partial.. like before..
NEVERMIND..
VA officials in Phoenix committed fraud when they deliberately falsified waiting list numbers to get a bonus. This is criminal and following an FBI investigation a Federal Grand Jury should have already handed out indictments. However Obozo is just shilling for the unions and might put some of the perpetrators on paid leave rather than send them to federal prison.
Here’s a great comment about the union from Flopping Aces:
Nanny G says:
These are the people reprimanding doctors who go looking for lost files so they can treat a patient properly.
These are the people putting medical staff (doctors, PAs, and interns) on report when they sterilize an Operating Room so another patient can have surgery that day instead of waiting.
These are the people who tell doctors not to see any patients after 3PM.
These are the protectors of slovenly paper-pushers who have created this horrific backlog.
It cannot improve until unions are kicked out of the VA.”
I couldn’t agree more. I have experienced the sterilization thing first hand, although at a non-VA union hospital.
From Wikipedia:
Executive Order 10988 is a United States presidential executive order issued by President John F. Kennedy on January 17, 1962 that recognized the right of federal employees to collective bargaining.
Executive Order 10988 was effectively replaced by President Richard Nixon's Executive Order 11491 in 1969.
ping
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