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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 8bits who wrote (144328)	9/16/2010 2:19:58 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541872

at one time government workers could not join unions (until the mid-60s..) but are now have a much higher union representation that the private sector. Two variables here: increasing membership from public sector workers; decreasing membership from private sector ones. some State and Local government workers are very well compensated. (Police, Fire Fighters, etc..) Don't know about Firefighters in Jersey but your point is accurate about the police. However, two points. The first is that those decent salaries should not be used to paint the full public sector work force. Some positions are dramatically underpaid--DPW workers, public librarians, and so on. That's the point of the comparisons that Ezra Klein mentioned. Second, we need excellent police, firefighters, teachers, public servants in general and should be willing to pay for that.