Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
A lot of resentment of unions - especially public-sector unions - is they no longer represent the working class, but the middle and upper-middle class. A family with an RCMP officer and a teacher would be in the top 15 or 20 per cent of household incomes. In small communities, especially, the teachers, firefighers, and police are the most affluent families in town.
|
If only the people feeling this resentment would take a moment to consider why those people make more and whether it’s possible to make improvements to their own situation instead of trying to convince someone else they don’t deserve to earn more money than they do.
Quote:
|
What strikes people as especially unfair is these comfortable, well-off middle class public servants will retire 10+ years earlier than their private-sector counterparts, with guaranteed pensions that those in the private sector can only dream about. And much of the cost for these upper middle class lifestyles and unparalleled security is being born by people who earn less and have less security. Or the costs are being kicked down the can for our kids to worry about paying for.
|
The quality of of the average private sector pension has been on the decline for sometime now, wage growth as you alluded to has also stagnated. Care to guess how those things have correlated with union membership levels in the private sector? Private sector employees can do more than dream about the types of pensions, security and compensation that public sectors employees earn, they just have to actually do more than dream about it.
Quote:
|
At the root of the issue is that arbitrators give no thought to how governments will pay for these salaries and pensions in the future. Governments are compelled to make deals that they can pay for only with greater and greater borrowing, and assuming more unfunded liability. Someday the whole house of cards is going to collapse.
|
I’m going to guess you’ve never been involved in an arbitration case with the labour board.