Free Republic

Voters in Cincinnati last week soundly defeated a ballot initiative which would have overhauled the pension system for public workers, leaving the city without a plan to deal with $872 million in unfunded liabilities. Cincinnati is not alone. Across the nation, cities and states are finding funding for basic services being crowded out of their budgets by the rising cost of retirees’ pensions and healthcare. … More and more cities, counties, and even some states will face the harsh reality of having to fix their pension systems or deal with a Detroit-style bankruptcy. …

Is your family ready to lose a mortgage payment or give up cellphone service for increased property and state taxes? Or would you rather see 33,000 public school teachers in Pennsylvania — nearly one out of every three — lose their jobs? With pension costs set to drive up the average family's taxes nearly $900 annually, those are the harsh choices Pennsylvanians face unless we demand reform now. The state's two pension systems, for state government workers (SERS) and public school employees (PSERS), have more than $47 billion in debt. It's a shortfall that taxpayers must cover. And the bill...

(Reuters) - Commuter rail workers in the San Francisco Bay Area went on strike on Friday after talks with management over a new contract broke down, throwing the morning commute into chaos in the traffic-clogged region. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) management and employee unions have been at loggerheads for months over pay and benefits for more than 2,000 train drivers and other union workers who are demanding large pay raises in part to offset being asked to contribute to their pensions and other benefits. On Thursday, union officials said both sides had finally agreed on pay and benefits,...

The misspelling of Jones Beach as “Jonse” on a new sign on Long Island's Robert Moses Parkway is making the rounds on social media. Jeena Belil, of Brookhaven, who saw the misspelled sign on Facebook, told Newsday she was shocked somebody didn't proofread the sign. …

Federal employees were paid more than $155 million of taxpayer dollars in 2011 for spending more than 3.4 million hours of “official time” on labor union activities that fell outside their assigned government duties, according to a survey by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). “Voluntary membership in Federal sector unions results in considerable reliance by unions on the volunteer work of bargaining unit employees, rather than paid union business agents, to represent the union in representational matters such as collective bargaining and grievances,” the OPM stated. But these “volunteers” were doing their union work on government time. …

What's the most important lesson to take away from the bankruptcy of Detroit? It's that when governments promise benefits they are unwilling to pay for, the system can very quickly come to resemble something designed by Bernie Madoff. Like many other cities around the country, Detroit promised police officers, firefighters, teachers and other public employees pension and post-retirement health care benefits, but was unwilling to set aside the money needed to fund those benefits. The city attracted workers with a total compensation package that included current wages and future benefits. Since the future benefits were substantially unfunded, they can be...

The National Treasury Employees Union is urging its members to oppose legislation that would force federal employees off their government healthcare plans and onto the state and national healthcare exchanges established under Obamacare. Members of Congress and their staffers are already required to participate in the exchanges, which will go into effect next October 1st under the Affordable Care Act. However, a bill (HR 1780) introduced in April by Rep. David Camp (R–Mich.) would extend that requirement to all federal employees, an idea that does not sit well with the union. So NTEU is strongly urging its members—including the Internal...

I feel sorry for the people of California.  They’re in a state that faces a very bleak future.And why does the Golden State have a not-so-golden outlook?Because interest groups have effective control of state and local political systems and they use their power to engage in massive rip-offs of taxpayers. One of the main problems is that there’s a bloated government workforce that gets wildly overcompensated. Here are some staggering examples.A state nurse getting $331,000 of annual compensation.A county administrator getting $423,000 pensions.A state psychiatrist getting $822,000 of annual compensation.Cops that get $188,000 of annual compensation.A city manager getting $800,000...

“This is what democracy looks like!” That’s a popular protest chant among liberals. It could be heard at many “Occupy” gatherings. It’s a staple at union-backed protests. We all know that in a democracy, sometimes things go your way, and sometimes they don’t. The big question is, how will you react? For example, many conservatives were disappointed by the results of last month’s elections. Despite high unemployment, sluggish economic growth and an unpopular health care program, a majority of voters returned a staunchly liberal president to office. But just as there are no permanent victories, there are no permanent defeats....

The Chicago teachers strike is over, but the public didn't win. Schools will still transfer bad teachers to other schools because it's nearly impossible to fire them. When bad teachers go from school to school, principals call it "the dance of the lemons." It would be funny if those teachers didn't slowly wreck children's lives. The basic issue is: Who decides how to manage a workplace? Unions say it's good that they protect American workers from arbitrary dismissal and make sure everyone is treated equally. But it's not good. Rules that "protect" government workers from arbitrary dismissal and require everyone...

The successful business leaders that sit on the Chicago Board of Education must have checked their brains at the door when they went into the negotiating room with the teachers union. How else could they possibly negotiate a contract that the school district can’t possibly afford? Truth be told, if board member Penny Pritzker’s Hyatt Hotels operated that way, they’d be out of business. But, alas, this is government. They strike deals with unions and figure out how taxpayers will fund it later. Reuters tells us: “Chicago public school teachers returned to their classrooms on Wednesday but thorny questions remained...

Chicago Teachers Vote to Continue Strike By STEPHANIE BANCHERO The Chicago public school teachers strike entered its second week after the teachers union declined Sunday to call off a week-long walkout that has catapulted the city into the national debate over teacher evaluations and job security. Only hours earlier, Chicago Teachers Union officials had trumpeted new concessions they said they had extracted from Mayor Rahm Emanuel during talks to settle the strike that started last Monday and has canceled classes for 350,000 students in the nation's third largest district. The vote to continue the strike came Sunday night by the...

Having spent the better part of a week asking teachers why they'd risk a public backlash by going on strike, I've concluded that the answer is best summed up by what one told me at their Labor Day rally: "Mayor Emanuel's pushed us to the limit. He's the world's biggest asshole." Actually, I think he may have dropped the F-bomb once—or twice. But I'm trying to clean things up since this is a family newspaper, dammit! But here's the bottom line: so much of this fight is fueled by the animosity of thousands of teachers toward one man. Emanuel increased...

If Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has spent the last 18 months painting a portrait of public-employee unions as intransigent and selfish, the Chicago Teachers Union this week provided him with confirmation. On Monday, 25,000 Chicago teachers (average salary: $76,000 before benefits) walked out of their classrooms, leaving nearly 350,000 schoolchildren and their parents in the lurch. The teachers are fighting to protect their lavish pay and benefit packages and also trying to stave off a new accountability plan that would evaluate their effectiveness using studentsÂ’ test scores. The Chicago strike serves as a counterpoint to events in Wisconsin after WalkerÂ’s...

The spending plan proposed by Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, Mitt Romney’s pick as the Republican vice presidential candidate, has drawn strong opposition from federal employees. Under the proposed House Republican budget, which Ryan sponsored as chairman of the Budget Committee, savings from the federal workforce would total $368 billion over 10 years. The two-year freeze on basic federal pay rates, scheduled to expire at the end of this year, would be extended through 2015 for a total of five years. “The Path to Prosperity,” as the budget plan is named, also calls on federal workers to make an...

Despite some gains in student achievement, Las Vegas has been named the worst city in the nation for education, according to two rankings released this week. Parenting Magazine came out with a list of the top 10 worst cities for education in America in 2012. Topping that list is Las Vegas, which was dinged for its schools’ high pupil-to-teacher ratio and a lower-than-average per-pupil funding. The magazine, which has a circulation of more than 2 million readers, cited the recession as a cause for Las Vegas’ low education ranking. The Clark County School District was recently downgraded by two Wall...

For a long time, the United States had one economy. Now we have two economies that compete for America's wealth: A private economy and a public economy. The 2012 election will decide which will be subordinate to the other. One economy will lead. The other will follow. How the U.S. arrived at the need to choose between two competing economies reveals a lot about the political polarization in the country. Any history of the Democratic Party in the 20th century will recognize its roots in the American labor movement. The party was defined by the names of those unions. The...

Union-funded hacks like those at the Economic Policy Institute tell us public employees have it rough. Their pay is so low they resort to eating dog food at night. Their pensions are terrible and no one – and we mean no one – should be subjected to such poor health care coverage. It baffles the mind, then, to look at the honest numbers. Because when one does, it shows that the people at EPI are little more than union shills spewing cooked up numbers to satisfy the paymaster. In the latest in a series of reports issued by EAGnews.org focused...

Despite a push to diversify its economy, the Sacramento region still depends heavily on government wages. The state employs roughly 75,000 workers in Sacramento County, excluding those working for its two college systems and the legislature. Collectively, they earned about $4.4 billion last year, far more than state workers in any other county, according to the State Controller's Office. State workers based in Yolo, El Dorado and Placer counties earned another $200 million. As part of his proposal to close a $16 billion deficit, Gov. Jerry Brown wants to cut state worker pay by 5 percent (and introduce a four-day...

This message is from Pres. Gerald W. McEntee and Sec.- Treas. Lee Saunders.By now you’ve probably heard that Scott Walker survived his recall election. To do so, he spent nearly $50 million.But with the recall of Sen. Van Wanggaard, a pro-worker majority now controls the Wisconsin Senate and we have dealt a major blow against Walker’s ability to do more damage to the working families of Wisconsin.We should all be proud of the AFSCME sisters and brothers who came together in Wisconsin and inspired workers across the country to fight back against the orchestrated attacks on the middle class.The Walker...