Comments on: California's Unions Are A Major Contributor To The State's Problems

By: Jim Lane

Jim Lane — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 18:28:50 +0000

I agree that California Unions are a big problem and getting bigger. Is there any organizations that are attempting to counter this BS?

By: Jeff Schuitema

Jeff Schuitema — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:07:05 +0000

Public Sector Unions must be banned. I know a lot of teachers and they are a useless lot who chose to be teacher to have summers off, work exactly 1/2 of a year (do the math) and get paid full-time with benefits. By the way a normal work year is 2000 hours and if you add up teacher time off they work 1000 hours.

By: cliff

cliff — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:07:38 +0000

To Igor,

While I do agree that executive salaries are enormous and they are overpaid, cutting their salaries is a drop in bucket compared to the salaries and benefits are the union members. You could cut executive salaries to zero and it would still not make a dent in the overall education budget or really any larger company or public sector budget.

By: Igor

Igor — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:41:37 +0000

While some of your concerns may be valid, you have spoken only of things that unions do in the public eye. In doing so you mentioned that there was a time that their existence was justified, namely, when worker rights did not exist. However, you neglected to consider the important role unions continue to play in protecting workers rights.

Consider the role unions play in representing workers who are mistreated. The alternative is that workers would have to represent themselves against large and complicated government institutions and multimillion institutions. This would quickly erode the gains that workers have made throughout the years.

When deciding where to cut budgets(both private and public) management tends to look at cutting worker’s salaries and benefits, while keeping their extravagant salaries intact. Unions help ensure that there is some fairness in these decisions. I would contend that if you look at the enormous difference in the amount executives and rank and file workers make, you would find that in this regard the role of unions remains crucial.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:21:17 +0000

Unions are a tricky subject anywhere. In Ottawa, the city is essentially being held hostage by the transit union who went on strike 36 days ago. Unions have become a business enterprise where they no longer fight for fair rights and wages for their workers, as per their early intent, but are instead fighting for the greedy interests of the career unionists. In the case of the Ottawa bus strike, the Union is demanding the right to schedule their own hours and holidays instead of the city, which of course no employee at any company anywhere gets.