Gee Times Union why don't you just refer to teachers as moochers or parasites like a few of your posters on the message baord do? -cpg
From the Times Union 's editorial page
Everybody understands that unions try to get the best possible financial deal for their members, regardless of the consequences.
But, even given that, the Florida Education Association's lawsuit against the state is surprising.
The Legislature, facing a $4 billion budget deficit, voted earlier this year to make public employees pay 3 percent of their salaries toward their pensions.
That hardly seems unreasonable. Very few private-sector businesses provide free pensions.
Not many, in fact, provide defined benefit pensions at all.
Many have 401(k) plans but, in the depth of this Great Recession, no longer provide matching funds.
Under the circumstances, it hardly seems unreasonable to make state employees pay a small portion of their own pension costs.
The union's lawsuit claims that violates both state law and the Florida Constitution. Gov. Rick Scott insists they're wrong.
Time will tell what the courts decide. But with all of the suffering in the private sector - layoffs, pay cuts and lost benefits - the union seems callous and self-absorbed.
With revenues down sharply on all levels of government, it isn't reasonable for unions to demand that their members be exempt from the pain felt by others.
And the litigants' rhetoric has been outlandish.
One, for example, told The Tampa Tribune that mandatory pension contributions amounted to an "income tax" levied on government workers.
If so, it's a tax that private sector employees also pay, at a much higher rate.
Another said members of the Legislature should cut their own pay and benefits instead.
Maybe they should cut their own pay and benefits. But not instead.
There are 160 members of the Legislature and 170,000 teachers. There simply are not enough legislators to make much of a difference.
Here's something for the union to consider: Florida's state retirement system, the Tampa paper says, "is among the last in the nation that does not require its members to contribute toward their pensions."
The union needs to think about the consequences of what it is doing.
Good will, once squandered, is hard to get back.
Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/opinion/editorials/2011-06-23/story/state-pensions-pedestal-next-unions-state#ixzz1Q4NGfY3Q
Did the T-U's logic skip a beat?
ReplyDelete"Under the circumstances, it hardly seems unreasonable to make state employees pay a small portion of their own pension costs.
"The union's lawsuit claims that violates both state law and the Florida Constitution. Gov. Rick Scott insists they're wrong.
"Time will tell what the courts decide."
Under any circumstances it is grossly unreasonable for a huge segment of public servants to be forced to contribute from their paychecks if it is illegal and unconstitutional, as the union claims in legal action. If my check were getting smaller, I think I'd rather have a judge tell me it was legal than trust the word of a governor.
Everybody concedes that government employee pension plans and federal entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are in need of change. It's such a given that we all forget to ask why it's that way.
A married couple a short time from retirement can suddenly be told that the quarter-million dollars they've contributed over their lifetimes together doesn't buy them what they were promised. Teachers who struggle financially now are told that their paycheck is smaller but it's not a tax, and it's all because unions are the ruination of public education/government/capitalism/the economy. (Pick the demon that best fits the various arguments that teachers are the problem.)
That's what gets discussed when taxes are the topic. Nobody discusses why things that used to work don't now.