Aren't these public employees commiting an act of hubris?

People exercising their democratic rights, and you have the right to voice your irritation, sounds healthy enough to me. You may if you wish protest against high taxation on small/medium businesses.

I GA’ed mammal for being predictable.

It’s irresponsible. Texas has been right-to-work for a long time and has a strong economy. All these rust belt states are rusting over for some reason…and it seems Unions are part of the fungus.

Politics aside, wouldn’t you be ticked off if someone else was trying to screw you out of things you were promised when you were hired?

Public sector or not, people’s financial stability is being threatened, of course they’re going to be angry. It’s not hubris to demand what you were expected to be given, public sector employees are not meant to be paupers.

I think you’re advancing a false equivalence here. Public employees don’t have the same relationship with taxpayers that business owners have with their customers. Your customers are free to go anywhere they wish to get the products and/or services you offer. Taxpayers are always free to move to another state if they don’t like the one they’re living in, but it’s the nature of the social contract that we must all pay some taxes to provide for the services we need to live in a society. A society can’t function without people to pick up the garbage or teach the children.

People get fed up with their taxes, and they just decide that those people are making too much money? How are they going to function without services? The idea that the people who provide those services are overpaid is a fallacy. Public school teachers, for example, are among the lowest paid people among college graduates in the country. Most public employees have given up salary precisely because they want to keep their benefits. Now the Wisconsin legislature wants to take away both, along with their right to bargain for more. I think that’s worthy of protest.

@jlelandg , Texas has the 2nd worst public schools in the country (I think Mississippi takes the bottom) and they have a budget shortfall exceeding $20 billion. You need to read the papers more. Rick Perry says he can fill that by cutting out even more spending on education. He must be trying to beat Mississippi.

There was a projected $121M surplus in Wisconsin’s budget before Walker promised a lot of groups money, and now there’s a $137M deficit. You can read the surplus memo here. So now suddenly, state workers have to get screwed over because Walker wants to plump his pals who funded his way to office?

Notice, too, that he left out cops and fire fighters in this bill, because he knew that to take away their rights of negotiation would mean his ass in a sling. Those are two unions he can’t mess with politically. How capricious.

Edited. I would rather listen.

@jlelandg , Gail Collins has some specifics for you. But Glenn Beck is saying you shouldn’t use Google because it’s a government conspiracy. Maybe you should try another source.

As @IchtheosaurusRex said, you’re advancing a false equivalence here, but for another reason: You own the business. You are more like the governor. Your employees are more like the State workers. When your customers don’t want your product, your benefits go down. Eventually, if things get bad enough, your employees will take pay cuts or layoffs. In the public sector, the employees get screwed while the politicians pocket the cash.

The problem is the employer made a deal, and now won’t honor the agreement. As a business owner, would you enter into a long term agreement with a supplier, only to have them cancel the contract? If they were broke, would you at least expect them to renegotiate terms?

Some of you seem to be saying that those who drain the treasury have a stronger moral claim on it’s use than those who fill the treasury. Do I have that right?

@IchtheosaurusRex thanks, I don’t really watch Glenn Beck, but I saw this article and then watched the video it was a mischaracterization of what he said.

I still didn’t see a “2nd worst”. whatever..bed.

It’s not “hubris” at all. Now, I have my own personal issues with inefficiencies regarding government employment – but I don’t qualify this as hubris because I think your construction of the “employment relationship” here is a little off.

The relationship here is perhaps better related to that of the structure of a corporation. The citizen taxpayer is the shareholder, and the government or individual agency is related to the board of directors/managers. As such, the board/gov has a contract with its employees, the terms of which are dictated at the negotiation and last for, in the case of union contracts for the most part, a term of years. Shareholders may or may not be consumers of the services of the corp, just as taxpayers may or may not be consumers of the gov services (e.g., part of my taxes pay for public education, which I do not use nor do I have children to use it). But taxpayers inevitably use some of the services, and therefor all taxpayers are consumers.

In a corp, just as in the gov, if the heads unilaterally modify the contract, they may be subject to suit by the employees affected. As much as the modification may end up benefiting shareholders/taxpayers, it may also hurt them if they have to pay more to defend the suits, it hurts their image, there are third-party intervenors supporting those affected negatively, etc.

So, there is a fairly complex interaction of interests here. As such, although we may agree or not as to the proper outcome or whether the action was appropriate, those defying it are not by definition acting out of hubris.

@josie No, you don’t have it right. It’s not the treasury at stake, and the only morality involved is in honoring a contract. A lot of local governments have made questionable, some might say stupid, deals. But that does not mean you can unilaterally cancel them.

A lot of agencies offset low wages with benefit packages that are through the roof. And some places, the voters even approved them. You can’t cancel them 5, 10, 15 years later and say, “oh we made a mistake.”

In Wisconsin, they are proposing to not even negotiate new terms. They want to tear up the contract, and not discuss it, like it didn’t exist.

Here’s an interesting twist. The Democrats have disappeared to prevent a vote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/us/19wisconsin.html

Here is my favorite part of the article:
“By dusk, Senate Republican leaders had decided to adjourn, at least temporarily, as supposed sightings of Democrats — and rumors of supposed sightings of Democrats — were alleged by seemingly everyone. Among the claims: They had been seen leaving on a bus altogether. They were in Iowa. Or Illinois. Or both. ”

@zenvelo – I’m relatively familiar with union contracts and find that they generally include requirements in the contract to negotiate renewals in good faith for both sides – do you know if this was the case here?

If so, certainly this is a failure to do so on the part of the government.

@zenvelo
Thus, taxpayers are to be perpetually enslaved to the caprice of the previous generations of voters and legislators.
And if that is the case, why have elections at all? Why not surrender right now to the infinite accumulations of government policy such that there are no more rules and regulations that can be imagined?

@josie I did not say that. But the Governor in Wisconsin wants to throw out the contract, and will not negotiate new terms.

In the county where I live, it was realized back in 1995 that the pension system was broken. So the Board sat down with the local government employees, including the fire department and sheriffs, and restructured it to be sustainable. Older employees were not modified, but offered attractive packages to retire early or alter the plan. Middle experience employees were restructured going forward, and newer employees were put on something more like a corporate employee’s 401k. There was grumbling at first, but it went away after a while, and the county has remained solvent.

Why won’t the Wisconsin Governor do that? Because he wants to bust the union.

As someone who has spent the better part of her adult life working for “The State” in various positions, I find your analogy inaccurate. I was hired at a certain pay (near poverty level!!) and was promised certain benefits in the form of annual leave, sick leave, medical insurance, and a paltry retirement fund. So when there are plenty of customers, I don’t have the luxury of any bonuses, but when there are no customers, I have felt the pain of furloughs. I cannot afford the high quality medical insurance, so every time I go to the doctor, it costs me out of my pocket until I reach $1000. or the end of the calendar year, whichever comes first. When I retire (after 28 years of faithful, dedicated service), I can expect approximately half of my paycheck…yep! If I have trouble living on $28,000. a year, I’m pretty sure the idea of “retirement” on $15,000. a year will be a joke and will require a part-time job as a Wal-Mart greeter or something of similar ilk.
I don’t know about other states, but SC has a policy that prohibits state employees from being unionized. The closest we ever got to unionization was the creation of the State Employees Credit Union!
No one ever went to work for the state thinking they were going to vacation in Europe or drive a Maserati. They worked for the state because they knew, unless the economy went in the toilet or the govenment collapsed all together, they would have a paycheck and a few measly benefits. I agree that there is a lot of dead wood in government, and hopefully that can be weeded out without throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
And to piss you off further, they probably ARE getting paid while they protest, in the form of vacation days or sick leave, but they are the employees’ days to do with as they wish. They could be off on a day at the beach instead of standing up for what they think is right.
rant over

Oh my god, did @IchtheosaurusRex actually just say you should try another source because Glenn Beck said so???

@ladymia69 – Just in case you’re not being sarcastic, I’ll say that I’m pretty sure @IchtheosaurusRex was. ;-)

I am also a government worker and I can tell you this: in 1996, when I was hired full time by the county government that I still work for, the economy was good. People in the private sector were getting 6% raises, huge bonuses, and nobody wanted to work for the government. You were considered foolish for taking a government job. (I did not know what to do with a history degree so that’s why I ended up with the government). So while everyone else was getting huge bonuses and raises, we got ZERO raise, because our union had stupidly settled for a zero percent increase. I was young and happy to have a job that paid $26,040, so I did not care, and the benefits were good (health insurance which i did not appreciate then but I do now, decent vacation, sick time, holiday time, and job security) but…..jump forward to 2011 and now the economy is in the pits. Now people are looking at government workers like we’re greedy, money hungry, have it so good, spoiled, should not only take low pay but have crappy benefits as well. Nobody wanted these jobs when things were good…...

@ladymia69 , yes, of course I did. And of course Beck did. Didn’t you know the entire world is a socialist conspiracy? They’re probably watching you through binoculars from the roof of the next building right now, but you can’s see them because they have invisibility cloaks.

I have started and ran a business. I knew that my employees made money for me and without them I would be much poorer. I knew this because, at the beginning, I was the employee. I learned to hire people that havekills that I lacked and were willing to jobs that I was tired of doing. I also, with my partner,decided when we could afford a new employee, the cost of that employee was his salary or hourly wage, social security tax (as an owner I paid double), health insurance, and the many other things. We didn’t aim to make our employees dependent on us or to make sure they stayed poor. We also knew that when we stopped treating them fairly they would either quit or form a union (you are still allowed to do that in Pa.) We weren’t afraid of unions but we were too small to have time to deal with them. Instead we had a morning meeting (like quarters in the military) That is when we made job assignments, and listened to complaints and suggestions. It worked pretty well. We also paid a bonus when business was really good and none to them or ourselves when business was pretty bad. My partner bought me out and the business is still running the same way. If it got too big he’d end up hiring a “Human Resource” expert and start exploiting his workers.

I have a conscience and would feel guilty voting myself large bonus’s and wages while taking them away from my employees. I think that a CEO that can lay off 1000 people and sleep well at night is a psychopath or at least a sociopath. There used to be a penalty for treating employees like that, now you just move to another country where people expect to be abused.