Here's another reason why public sector unions should be banned
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
02/20/10 1:39 PM EST
It's baaaccckkkk! No, not the Terminator, California's seemingly interminable financial crisis. This time, state officials say they face a $20 billion gap between what they are spending and revenues coming into the state treasury.
Given the power of the California public sector unions, including those representing state and local government employees, and public school administrators and teachers, this crisis shows no sign of being solved because the unions refuse to consider relaxing their death grip on California's rapidly shrinking legion of tax payers.
But there is a silver lining here - California is pointing to an unpleasant but unavoidable truth that public officials across the country sooner or later must confront - the power of public sector unions must be broken.
It's not only that public sector unions are driving many state and local governments into fiscal insolvency by forcing them to accept contracts providing compensation benefits that far exceed those in the private sector for comparable work and that cannot be paid for without crippling tax increases.
As this developing situation in California demonstrates, public sector unions like those in our public schools and state and local governments also make it impossible to get rid of incompetents, and to manage public resources efficiently and effectively.
Doug Ross has multiple links that bring together in one post the several major factors in California's returning fiscal crisis, including the fact thousands of incompetent public schools teachers and administrators cannot be fired, thanks to the union contract.
See also this post from Ross on two incredible examples from New Jersey, including a retired public school teacher who paid in $62,000 and will get as much as $1.7 million in retirement, and a 49-year-old state worker who paid in $124,000 and retired with a pension and health benefits worth nearly $4 million!
It's a lot late, but California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger finally seems to have figured out that getting the Golden State out of its death spiral requires confronting the power of the public sector unions headon. Otherwise, the death spiral will take down America's former pearl on the Pacific.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com |
