GOP Governors Ready to Kill Public Employee Contracts - FDL

[WillyT]

GOP Governors Ready to Kill Public Employee Contracts
By: David Dayen
Saturday January 1, 2011 12:29 pm

<snip>

I said on Countdown back on Monday that I didn’t think this new class of GOP governors would need to be dragged kicking and screaming into screwing public employees out of jobs and benefits. They practically campaigned on it, after all, and the full-scale demonization campaign against “greedy government workers,” financed by the malefactors of great wealth, puts the wind at their backs. So governors like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker will clearly work to break existing contracts, add furlough days or basically do whatever possible to please the base by bashing public workers.

“What does this bring? What does it mean? Where are we going here?” Marty Beil, the leader of a union that represents 22,000 of Wisconsin’s corrections officers, maintenance workers, game wardens and others, said the other day. “State employees feel like they are the target of all the slings and the arrows and the bullets that the new administration is already throwing.” <...>

December, often a sleepy time around here, brought a series of explosive episodes. Democratic leaders, pressing to approve contracts for state workers before Republicans took control, called a special session.

Mr. Walker, who has said publicly that he hopes to force public employees’ wages and benefits “into line” with everyone else’s, urged leaders against the session, saying he needed “maximum flexibility” to handle the state’s coming budgets, but Democrats argued that the contracts were not particularly beneficial to workers anyway (they included no raises and furlough time that amounted to a pay cut).

When the pay freeze and the furloughs are the key elements of the Democratic contract, you know there’s a problem. I don’t want to recount all the distortions about bringing public worker wages and benefits “into line,” but the whole concept baffles me. Instead of looking at public pensions, for example, and thinking “Why do they get that?” shouldn’t the response be “Why don’t I get that?” Especially considering the record profits workers are generating for corporations at this time.

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More: http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/01/01/gop-governors-ready-to-kill-public-employee-contracts/

:kick:

[Drale]

1. If they are going to break a legal contract

I say sue the fuck out of them.

[freshwest]

7. They don't have to break the contract. Just lay them off and replace them.

They can de-fund their jobs and then rake in the money selling everything off to private firms.

EVERYTHING.

Remember the man's house that burned down because he didn't get his $75 fee in on time, and the RW media all said it was the right thing to do?

Of course we've got the charter school movement. All of these things are designed to privatize all government functions and pay off the GOPher cronies.

Smells like fascism in the classical sense to me.

Some states have already turned Child Protective Services to private vendors. Great way to bury the problem.

And I do mean bury it.

[PDJane]

2. Well, hell......the GOP can't have people organizing

and demanding what they should have, can they? Salaries, pensions, health care, a social safety net...I mean, that's putting the peasants on a par with the big guys, can't have that.

I am utterly and totally disgusted with this whole thing....it's meant to keep the money flowing to the top, and it's vicious and pathetic.

[PSPS]

3. It is a good game of distraction they're playing

You see people taking the bait even here on DU.

Instead of looking at public pensions, for example, and thinking “Why do they get that?” shouldn’t the response be “Why don’t I get that?”

That's precisely the problem. The media does its best to direct people's anger at the wrong target. And it seems to be working quite well. The biggest prize, of course, is social security. Wall Street is salivating over the prospect of getting their hands on that $3 trillion.

[shanti]

4. arnold tried and tried to do that to us

thank god he's gone :(

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Walker will simply refuse to negotiate new contracts on Union terms.

I also expect him to at least threaten to privatize the prison system, and probably Probation & Parole ("Community Corrections"). Workers will be given a choice between no contract & not working.

If that happens, I expect there to be illegal strikes, as there were back in about 1970.

[madrchsod]

8. what about that thing he`s appointing to wisconsin dnr....

the rock and the pec is dirty enough let alone having this thing allowing corps and farms to dump more shit in the rivers. we`ve come a long way down here to clean up those rivers.

[alarimer]

6. The problem is not public employees pay and benefits.

The problems is that private sector pay and benefits. Corporations can outsource, downsize and outright fire people with near impunity.

Now, Repukes want governments to be able to do the same, so that we are all eating the same shit sandwich. Why not start questioning the reasons for why private sector pay and benefits have fallen while corporate profits are the highest EVER.

Fuck this nonsense.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. The game is to keep the have-nothings roiled up

at the have-almost-nothings so the have-everythings can skate.

[snot]

9. Rec'd back up to 5.

Really important that people realize the problem is not the unions but the fact that not everyone has one, including folks in developing countries.

[Jackpine Radical]

11. A

Fucken

men.

[WillyT]

12. Kick !!!

:kick: