Public Employees Are Bankrupting Cities & States

THE DOCTOR IS IN
________________

LAS VEGAS-Hello America, and how is the world treating you?

The government just released a report this year that there are more Public Employee unions than there are Private Sector unions. That's unacceptable. The unions,whether public or private are bankrupting this country, city by city, county by county, state by state. Yet again, just last week the Obama administration said they want to unionize the TSA employees. I say, Why? It has been proven over and over again that the private firms performed better that TSA employees. Before the government put together the TSA the private firm(s) were screening much better that the current TSA employees. The private firms caught more breaches of security than the TSA employees ever did.

The private firms were paid less money and caught more security breaches. Now the Obama people want to unionize the TSA employees with enormous union benefits and pay them more money. Does that make sense?

You can bet that this administration will pay these newly unionized employees more money, give them excessive bargaining rights so as to increase their salary more and more, give them very lucrative health plans and give them very generous vacation, holiday and overtime pay. And I have no doubt once unionized the union will bargain and receive a retirement package worth its weight in gold, one that anyone working in the private sector will never receive. Plus, when these TSA employees are unionized it will be very hard to fire an employee without long and protracted and expensive legal recourse. That doesn't make sense either.We the taxpayer are the ones on the hook for all of this money.

I'll make a prediction here and now. When Obama and his administration unionize these TSA worker's, the quality of their work will fall very quickly. There will be more and more security breaches and mistakes made. Why? Because these workers will feel secure that they cannot be fired without a very long termination process that may take years.They literally will become lazy and lax in their job.

Example: Teachers in New York.-- New York teachers union job security is so great that when there is a bad teacher or a teacher that committed a crime, they're not fired. They are put in what is called a "rubber room". These teachers report to the "rubber room" each and every day. They read books, watch television, knit or whatever they want to do to pass the time of day. All the while they are getting paid their teacher salary. This salary is paid by the tax paying public and the teachers benefits go on while the the termination fight progresses. This fight can go on for years. It's so bad now that New York lawmakers continue to pay these "rubber room" bad and incompetent teachers to sit around for not teaching because the cost of the termination process moving through the court/legal system is cost-prohibitive, according to lawmakers.

I would like to say that these Public Sector unions, backed and pushed by the administration are putting such a burden on the private worker taxpayer that the average everyday Joe or Jane Doe is losing out in every way.

In this current recession and/or depression (depends how who you are and how you look at it) it's no secret that the Public Employee unions refuse to give when it comes to saving cities, counties and states from going under. These union people sign fat contracts and the lawmakers give them everything they want so that they can receive the union support for reelection. It's a vicious circle.

It wasn't long ago that San Diego, CA, Orange County, CA. and many other cities across the country were on the verge of bankruptcy and instead of solving the problem(s) many of these cities borrowed monies and raised taxes to keep the city afloat and continued to pay these out of sight salaries and retirements to the Public Employees.While that was happening the unions and lawmakers were negotiating new contracts still giving union members annual cost of living increases, obscene pension and retirement benefits and increased health and sick benefits. Remember, no ones is giving the private sector worker a free health care plan or giving them an annual cost of living or a pension and retirement plan that can pay them 90% of their salary when they leave their job.

I think back when President Reagan fired all of the Air Traffic Controller's. There were thousands and thousands of them that lost their job because one of the issues was that these people continued to demand more and more. And believe it when I say that President Reagan's mass firing of thousands of people didn't stop the government from working. People were standing in line to replace these unionized idiots.

I think that some of these cities, counties and states should immediately file for bankruptcy because these excessive salaries,annual cost of living, obscene retirements and pensions are unsustainable. As I recall Flint, Michigan went into a receivership status about 2002 and just recently again laid off about 170 police officers. Also, the city of Vallejo, CA turned to bankruptcy on or about 2008, and now San Francisco,CA is considering filing for bankruptcy. As far as I'm concerned I say, "good, do it".

Police officers, firefighters, teachers, etc.,should not be exempt from being laid off or fired. In fact, if they do get laid off and/or fired they will get a small grasp of reality as to how the person working in the private sector feels and how that worker copes without all of that guaranteed protection of free health care, annual raises, bonuses and generous sick and vacation time. These Public Employees should feel the pain also.

So, bottom line. Go for it cities and counties. Do bankruptcy. Maybe then under bankruptcy protection these hard strapped cities and counties can throw all of the existing public employee contracts into the waste basket which would hopefully bring the public employees back to negotiations that would be more in line with reality.

When these cities, counties and states negotiate with the powerful unions they should immediately cut out all annual automatic salary increases,(when a person hires in on the job they are aware of the low range and the highest range being paid for that position) and when they reach the highest, that's it. Annual cost of living should be totally eliminated (which has ranged from 4 to 8 percent a year). The obscene retirement/pension benefits currently being paid should be eliminated and all public employees should be placed into a 401(k) retirement plan like the private sector worker has to accept. The private sector worker and senior citizens never see a cost of living in their salary or income each and every year. In fact, while these Public Employees were scooping up between 4% and 8% cost of living increases the private worker saw "none" and the senior citizen on social security saw their meager 1.2 percent cost of living totally eliminated.

The ideas mentioned here are suggested as a starting place These public service employees have been scamming the system at the expense of the private worker for too long.- And, that's my opinion.

Bradley W. Kuhns, Ph.D., O.M.D.
____________________________
Dr. Kuhns can be reached by e-mail at:
bradleykuhns@gmail.com