I am tired of people bashing public employees.

[alarimer]

Lately the talk has been of cutting pensions and guaranteed benefits for public employees of all stripes. Here, in Texas, it has gotten so bad that they are talking about changing our health plan to a catastrophic one, with very high deductibles. Now health care as a whole is a problem that will not be solved by the Health Care Reform Bill. We all know that single-payer will reduce costs for all employers, public and private so that is really a separate issue.

But I see a lot of articles, even from reasonably liberal people, decrying state and federal pensions. One of the few groups that still have actual pensions instead of 401K (sometimes 401k's are also an option but are not mandatory). Anyway what brought this on was a post from Michael Tomasky, talking about people who complain about public pensions, and usually the most visible are cops, firefighters and teachers. Here is the link http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/oct/13/us-politics-dems-reps-taxes-pensions

Some cops and firefighters do retire relatively young and get fairly generous pensions. BUT those are or can be very dangerous jobs. Plus the pay usually sucks. Teachers have to put up with a lot of shit, especially from bratty, out of control little shits in their classrooms and their parents who think little Johnny can do no wrong, even though he's a sociopath. Not to mention all the pressure from tests, etc. Do the critics realize that many teachers and other public employees do not pay into social security? I do not know how common that is but around here (Corpus Christi, TX), it is quite common. Teachers take other jobs when they can to make the forty quarters requirement for social security.

The other issue I want to raise is the pay. I am a state employee in Texas and things are generally good. Texas, believe it or not, is a much better employer than Florida is (my only other employer on the state level). I am doing essentially the same job as I was in Florida but the Florida job was hourly (at the time about 9 dollars an hour) with no benefits. It was technically classified as temporary but was in reality just a way of getting cheap labor from science graduates who really needed experience. Needless to say I jumped ship as soon as I could, but I knew many people who stayed in those jobs for years and years. It was all they could get, jobs in biology are much scarcer than the number of biology graduates produced each year. In both of these jobs I have also worked very hard, contrary to popular perceptions of public employees. I work weekends (I get time off during the week to compensate), not every weekend and not the entire weekend but still my schedule is irregular. I work long days (12-14 hours sometimes) out in the Texas heat in summer or in the cold because our work is year-round. The work is difficult physically. So when someone complains about state employees never risking any more than paper cuts, well, at least in my case they are utterly wrong.

Which is not say I don't have complaints about my job and my employer. I know I have complained to anyone who would listen. For example, I reached the top of my career ladder after about 5 years. That's it. No more raises or promotions without competing for them in some other job. I certainly wish to advance my career and you don't do that by staying put so I am talking about a worse-case scenario. Now the pay is not terrible but at age 43 I will never own my own home, not without a partner at least. I will probably never travel to Europe because my retirement pay, should I stay here long enough, will be enough to pay rent (remember I will not be able to afford a home of my own) and the essentials but not much more. (I only used Europe as an example- there are many places I wish to go but cannot afford to). Now I have it better than a lot of people whose companies have reneged on their pension obligations. I just wanted to point out the reality of at least one situation to counteract the anti-public employee propaganda. I realize a lot people buy into it because they have been shafted all their lives by one corporation or another. The solution is not to tear one group down but to build all the others up. ALL employees should have a defined-benefits pension. ALL should have a livable wage, safe working conditions, generous vacation time and other benefits. I think that the decline in unions for one thing is a major contributor to the problem. If most jobs were unionized, I think we would be at each other's throats a whole lot less because we would all be better off.

[Taverner]

1. Every IT employee I ever met at the city, state or local level was excellence in motion

Much better than the fly-by-night folks that work for start-ups

These folks genuinely cared for their IT environments.

And they had long term time invested. So as a result they ran their servers with the utmost care.

[Hannah Bell]

2. kr

[hollowdweller]

3. Do you have any republican co workers?

How do they feel about the possibility of having their bennies cut??

[alarimer]

4. I am sure they will be unhappy.

The irony will escape them, I am sure. Of course some of the changes are dependent upon what the economy does and maybe even the election. And may not come to pass anyway, what I read was likely the worst-case situation.

[MrsCorleone]

5. Thank you for this post.

I'm so irritated by the anti-public employee sentiment being pushed by the rightwing. The big corporations are leading this campaign to reduce public bennies and/or pay because they cannot cut salaries further to improve their bottom lines in the private sector without cuts to the public sector. And, the RW talking point that pension obligations are bankrupting city, county, and state treasuries is just BS. The funds set aside were largely lost due to their investment in fraudulently rated AAA instruments. Anger should be directed at the corrupt ratings agencies, not public employees, whom, by the way, pay into their pensions just as private sector workers pay into their 401ks and IRAs.

On the topic of retirement plans, 401Ks are a scam that benefit the corporations that offer them, in lieu of pensions, and provide a boom for Wall Street banks. I have yet to see a clear example of a 401K plan providing for the worker more security than a defined pension plan. Seriously, how many can say that their 401Ks will actually provide anything close to a secure retirement? From my observation, I am guessing very few.

In terms of economic implications, if there are cuts in public sector bennies and/or salaries, these employees will be forced to take money out of the economy. As public sector pay falls, so does that of the private sector, at least until private jobs outnumber job seekers. Even more money is then sucked out of the economy, which is just fanfuckingtastic in an already fragile economic environment. As a small biz owner, it is in my best interest that the workers in my community do well. I do well when everybody does well. The rightwingers seem to be against this notion on every level. It seems, dare I say, un-American.

Okay. Rant off. Thanks for listening.

[YvonneCa]

8. You should post this as a stand...

...alone post in GD. :)

[11 Bravo]

6. The "troops", whom they rhetorically fellate but in reality couldn't give a flying fuck about ...

are public employees. I point that out every chance I get.

[YvonneCa]

7. Great post. "The solution is not to tear one group down but to build ...

... all the others up. ALL employees should have a defined-benefits pension. ALL should have a livable wage, safe working conditions..." You words are excellent. :)