BS: Public Employees: Second Class Citizens

Subject: BS: Public Employees: Second Class Citizens
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 08:10 AM

Civil Service? Don't need it! Lets go back to the rotten patronage system that existed before Teddy Roosevelt.

Public Employees are "different" according to the BuShites: they're less equal than everyone else.

Wake Up, Amerika!

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GOP governors cut state workers' rights

By ROBERT TANNER, Associated Press
Last updated: 2:51 a.m., Monday, March 21, 2005

Republican governors in a few spots across the country are angering state employees by removing one of organized labor's strongest tools: the right to collective bargaining.

Governors in three states who've taken the step say it's about making government more efficient or being fair to non-union workers. Critics say it's political payback for labor's traditional support of Democrats and part of a wider shift to undermine workers in favor of big business.

Within hours or days of taking office this year, Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Matt Blunt in Missouri eliminated collective bargaining agreements for state employees, affecting about 50,000 workers. Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher did the same when he took office in 2003....

In Mississippi, where state employees don't have collective bargaining rights, GOP Gov. Haley Barbour supports a legislative effort to eliminate existing civil-service protections. In Oklahoma, the GOP-controlled state House approved a measure to repeal a law granting collective bargaining to municipal employees.

Blunt said the union rules of the business world should not apply to government. "Fundamentally, public employees are different than private sector employees -- their employer is the people of Missouri," he said on his first day in office. "Taxpayers should not be bound by collective bargaining agreements."

Union leaders see the actions as concerted effort among new, more conservative leaders, and tie it to President Bush.Spokesmen for the governors all dismissed any notion that they had acted together, pointing out that each had their own motivation. None of the governors responded to requests for interviews.

...Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, with 1.5 million members [said] "I see this as an effort to make the Republican right-wing conservatives the party of the future for a long, long time."

(full article on any AP-linked newspaper site)

Subject: RE: BS: Public Employees: Second Class Citizens
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 11:00 AM

First official act Regan did when he went into office in 1981 was to freeze federal hiring. And it has been downhill from there. Though hiring was reinstated some months later, federal employees have always been the pawns of whatever personal politics are of the current president. Look at health care, for example. Some procedures are paid for in democratic adminstrations that aren't paid for in republican. (Most to do with reproductive rights).

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Public Employees: Second Class Citizens
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 11:06 AM

Someone take this "downstairs".

Subject: RE: BS: Public Employees: Second Class Citizens
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 11:07 AM

Oh. I guess it IS downstairs. Sorry.

Subject: RE: BS: Public Employees: Second Class Citizens
From: DougR
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 11:35 PM

Uh can it be taken down even lower?

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Public Employees: Second Class Citizens
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 11:37 PM

You just did. . . ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: Public Employees: Second Class Citizens
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 22 Mar 05 - 11:11 PM

Darwinian Economics - useful across all stratas of life.

Those can milk - are on the dole.
Those who can do.
Those you can't ... teach.
Those who can't teach ... become administrators

Those who can't, can't work for the postal union 20 hours a week.

All others are displaced nobility.....most sitting in squalid tents beside express-ways....and ALL with a story to tell.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: BS: Public Employees: Second Class Citizens
From: number 6
Date: 23 Mar 05 - 12:37 AM

Public Employees .... keeps them employed, off the streets. They don't bother me. One way or the other we'd pay for them through our taxes.

As to unions ... there being busted even in the private sector.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Public Employees: Second Class Citizens
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Mar 05 - 12:49 AM

I was a public employee once on a temporary job for 3 months. I loved it. It was the only job I ever worked for where the bottom line was not the money, the bottom line was to accomplish the work itself which was a public service. That was a completely different and far more agreeable basis on which to conduct one's actions, as far as I was concerned. It resulted in a much more enjoyable attitude on the part of both workers and management.

All of society could be like that, and that was one of the key points behind the philosophy presented in the Star Trek scripts (specially in the Next Generation show).

A spiritual community is like that too...if it's a good one. I've had experience of that as well. It's not that you are opposed to profit on principle. I'm not opposed to profit. It's that the main purpose of your work becomes the work itself, and what the work results in for all concerned...meaning: for the whole community.

Upon that basis what would be the rationale for having the cigarette industry, for example? You cannot market something en masse like cigarettes if you genuinely care about the whole community, in my opinion. Nor can you manufacture nerve gas or atomic bombs.

If you mainly care just about money, then you can do it without a qualm.

Subject: RE: BS: Public Employees: Second Class Citizens
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 23 Mar 05 - 11:56 AM

Fundamentally, public employees are different than private sector employees -- their employer is the people...

As one of the people who employees them, I want my policemen and firemen paid well enough that they'll stay on the job instead of jumping to better-paying private employment at the first opportunity. If someone would like to explain exactly how that goal can be achieved without collective bargaining, I'm all ears.

Subject: RE: BS: Public Employees: Second Class Citizens
From: PoppaGator
Date: 23 Mar 05 - 01:21 PM

I've been a state employee ~ briefly ~ and I've also been a taxpayer who has had a variety of experiences with public employees, some good and some bad.

Heroic firefighters and cops, of course, deserve every penny they get and more. Lazy and unhelpful paper-pushers at the Department of Motor Vehicles, on the other hand, get no sympathy from me or anyone else. Which group is more typical of public employees as a whole?

In the US, at least, taking a job with the government entails settling for a modest rate of pay in exchange for good benefits, guaranteed annual raises, and near-absolute job security. Unions have undoubtedly played a role in reinforcing the positive aspects, but public employees in non-unionized areas seem to be doing OK, and they always have ~ even back before organized labor ever got involved with government workers.

In general, I oppose right-wing promotion of business interests at the expense of the ordinary citizen, and I am especially nauseated by their efforts to persuade small business operators to vote against their own interests as consumers and private citizens in the effort to protect corporate profits.

In this case, however, I can't work up a whole lot of sympathy, let alone outrage, on behalf of the civil servants. If anyone can convince me otherwise, please give it a try.

Subject: RE: BS: Public Employees: Second Class Citizens
From: frogprince
Date: 23 Mar 05 - 01:28 PM

A year or so back, the Supreme Court ruled that a state, unlike a private employer, is free to throw an ill or disabled employee out on his/her ear; the federal guidlines for private employers don't apply.
My wife is a state employee, and a life-long diabetic who has almost miraculously maintained good health for 50 years; we're crossing our fingers on her continued employment and the current and retirement benefits she has earned.