Unions, Pensions, and Campaign Finance - the love affair continues
This most recent deal cut to keep a couple of downstate facilities open should have AFSCME union bosses and their members up in arms, but instead it has the union leaders "welcoming the news." All you state pension people please pay special attention here, because this is a big reason why your pension systems are underfunded to the tune of somewhere between $80 and $136 billion. Step one, Governor Quinn cuts a deal with the unions to get their support by making a promise of no layoffs. Step two, because his party is incapable of passing a budget that doesn't spend tens of billions more than we take in, he shakes down the unions and some mental health facilities, and breaks his promise by threatening to close a few facilities. Step three, dem leaders get together and take money that was supposed to go into your pension systems to pay to keep the facilities open. And there you have it, Illinois politics in nutshell.
One would think that the union members and their leadership might be a little concerned when the democrat leaders decide, again, to plunder the pension system to pay for other things they like more than your retirement, but not a whimper. In fact, union leaders involved consider it a victory. AFSCME members are paying millions of dollars in dues, which your leadership spends to elect policitians to go to Springfield, and spend your pension money on many things that are not the pension system. But keep on electing them, and expect something different to happen. We all know the old, overused cliche' about expecting a different result from doing the same action over and over and over and over.
Bluegrass
You are spot on, although your statement of “might be a little concerned” is bit understated, as you should have said “terrified”, of the impending pension collapse that will occur in tandem with Illinois forthcoming bankruptcy.
It should be pointed out that the current funding malaise and grotesque management salaries is a shared responsibility by all parties involved, through decades of socio-political gerrymandering.
From the industrialized Republicans came an adversary that parallel and sometimes exceeded any corporate negotiating team, creating an impregnable them-n-us barrier that required a mono-political alliance with the Democrats. For years the Republicans have pushed for a “business” government model that Mussolini called “Fascism” and when the workers create such a model, the Pubs now whine about it.
This confrontational agenda driven by corporate controlled Republicans, in combination with the insanely stupid belief that you can run government like a business, created a corporate style management structure within the governmental unions. A union structure, with salaries and benefits that attempts to emulate and compete, with corporate compensations of similar size and financial flows.
With the power of the people behind them, the Democrat’s drank the coolaid and use the union’s membership to further their perceived entitlements. With social agendas well intentioned, they pushed their causes forward using the might of governmental employees, as a weapon against their sworn enemies the Pubs.
Both sides took advantage in not funding the pensions, the Republicans because they prefer to abuse the average worker through corporate style domination and the Democrats because they could use that funding money for some other social entitlement.
So it really goes back to that old African saying.
“When the Elephants make love or war the grass suffers.”
And because of it - all we have today is barren dirt.
Union members and their leadership are not concerned because they think they are entitled to amounts far in excess of what non-government employees get even though they retire many, many years before age 65. They think the taxpayers owe them. The average taxpayer can't afford to save for their own retirements let alone pay for the golden nest eggs of public employees. Sooner or later public employees will be faced with the choice of accepting less retirement or receiving no retirement at all from a broke state. It will be better of all of the people of Illinos if this happens sooner rather than later.
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