Check this out .....

[WNYresident]

Go check out http://www.metrocommunitynews.com/steam/index.pl?cid=27 blow off your steam section in the metro community news.

THis is better than winning the lottery.

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Bob, City of Tonawanda: According to the US Department of Labor Statistics: 13.2 percent of all American workers were union members in 2002. In government, 37.5 percent of all workers are unionized. Many union members receive: a salary 20 percent more than non-union, 15 sick days a year, of which any not used can accumulate up to 300, 12 paid holidays, 6 personal days, 5 weeks vacation after 15 years service, and a fully paid family medical/prescription plan. At retirement, after 25 years service, they receive a lump sum check for any unused sick days, and for the rest of their lives: a defined pension of half of their last year’s salary, and a fully paid family medical/prescription overage plan

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How do they get any work done.

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15 sick days off a year
12 Paid holidays off
6 personal days off
35 vacation days after 15 years

68 Total days paid off
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52 Weeks in one year
5 Working days in a week
260 Days if you actually worked a full year 5 days a week.

68 Days off when you total them up
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192 Days worked (260 Work days- 68 days paid off )

They are contracted to work 73% of the year.

A lot of them make over $100,000 a year.


Thier average days off per week for the year is 1.31 days. They acutally work less than a 4 day work week after 15 years.

$100,000 Yearly Salary
192 Days you have to show up to work in your contract
$520.83 Average pay per day.

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[WNYresident]

$100,000 Yearly Salary
192 Days you have to show up to work in your contract
$520.83 Average pay per day.

or

$125,000 Yearly Salary
192 Days you have to show up to work in your contract
$651.04 Average pay per day.

Remember these figures don't include benifit cost or what ever perks we don't know about.

[citymouse]

Seems to me everybody should join a union.

[Curmudgeon]

Yes. I agree. Every single worker in the world should be in a union. Then, we can all be paid above market value wages. Then, the business owners who pay those wages will have to inflate the price of the products and services they sell to cover the cost of of the inflated union salaries. Then, the amount of goods and services your union paycheck can purchase will be reduced.

If everyone is in a union, it has the effect of diluting the purchasing power of money to the point that the unionized worker gets no benefit at all.

In fact, if everyone were in a union, businesses everywhere would be saddled with arbitrary work rules and technology adoption restrictions designed to preserve jobs that are no longer needed. Productivity would decline and in the end we would all be poorer instead of richer. An extreme example of this is what happened to the former soviet union. Their system went bankrupt supporting dinosaur industries that produced very little.

In order for union members to receive above-market-value wages, there must be some non-union people who must ultimately pay more for a product or service. Thare ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The money has to come from somewhere.


You don't REALLY want everyone in a union. That would be damaging to the current union members! What you want is a certian percentage of the US work force unionized. If it is too small a percent, the union members don't have political power and are marginalized. If it is too great a percent, there aren't enough non-union people working to support the union members and their above-market value wages. There IS an optimum percentage - I'm not sure what it is though. Sounds like a good PhD thesis for some economics grad student...
Perhaps the field of Biology has the answer. I'll bet someone has conducted research of optimum levels of parasites vs. hosts to see just how much a host population (non-union) can support parasites (union) before the entire system begins to suffer and die. I'll bet the mathematics of the two fields are strikingly similiar.

[WNYresident]

parasites vs. hosts.

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Could be stated as:


Politicians VS taxpayers. A whole layer of cost that does not produce a product or service. This layer needs to be widdled down a lot

[citymouse]

First off you can't equate public service with private industry. Local Goverment is there to provide services to the citizens, even those who do not pay taxes. Private industry is there for profit which is a whole different playing field.
Of course overhead should be a concern for goverment. politics come in to play however, if politicians did not have to give contracts for equipment and supplies to campaign contributers and really restructured the way they hired people and spent taxpayer dollars on how they provided service. If they bargined in good faith instead of only looking to cut the jobs they can't control with politics. If they ran the city and dealt with employees like private industry, then your overhead would be less.
As far as union goes, every one always loks at the "Jimmy Hoffa" image. It is a small percentage. as far as labor and politics go private industry spends much mre on politics and lobbying then unions could ever hope to. Yet labor works for all workers rights union or non-union.
Every one should be in a union if it is thier choice to do so. Those manufacturing jobs we lost are never coming back and the job's replacing them in the service sector pay 18% less according to todays Buffalo news. Non-union jobs.
How does that help the standard of living in this country?, with less disposible income. With increasing health costs put on the work force it reduces buying power even more. How does lowering wages and cutting benifits help the economy?
It seems the parasites here are the ones who send our jobs over seas and make a profit on us buying them.
Does a shirt cost less because it is made in China , or a TV made in korea or japan. I haven't seen prices go down because of this new trade system thats taking our jobs.

[WNYresident]

"First off you can't equate public service with private industry."
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Well yes you can. THere are certian "moral" rules all businesses sort of run on which goverment will have to run on.

Hiring based on what you know not who you know.

Overtime abuse has to stop. I dont care how important you think you are you have to work at a acceptable work level.

Pay raises based on time served not on ability or results. If we continuely just allow them to raise thier pay (politicians) our cost of goverment will always rise. I don't know why they think we want a large goverment. I for one want the most efficient tiniest goverment we can have. I dont mean the basic civil service, i mean the layers of politicians and thier departments.

Paying someone to work 8 hours when they only have to put in 4. They do that in cheektowaga for the garbage people.

Overpaying in general for services.

Sneaky bids for products and services.

There are a lot of "rules" we can apply to our employees in the civil service market. It's a business period. Services rendered and paid for. If our "local" goverment was ran with some business sense we'd all be better off.

We first need to widdle the politicians down. Most of there time served is basically part time so there's no reason to pay them full time wages.

[Curmudgeon]

Those manufacturing jobs we lost are never coming back and the job's replacing them in the service sector pay 18% less according to todays Buffalo news. Non-union jobs. How does that help the standard of living in this country?
Well, every time I go to Wal-Mart I see prices getting cheaper and cheaper. Every time I go to Wal-Mart my paycheck can buy more stuff than it could before. So, my standard of living is steadily increasing. That's called "productivity" and when productivity rises, everybody benefits. I don't really care "how many dollars" I get paid so much as "what can those dollars get me" in terms of stuff - goods and services I consume...

Does a shirt cost less because it is made in China , or a TV made in korea or japan. I haven't seen prices go down because of this new trade system thats taking our jobs.
Sure you have! Absolutely false statement. Shame on you.

Of course overhead should be a concern for goverment. politics come in to play however, if politicians did not have to give contracts for equipment and supplies to campaign contributers and really restructured the way they hired people and spent taxpayer dollars on how they provided service. If they bargined in good faith instead of only looking to cut the jobs they can't control with politics. If they ran the city and dealt with employees like private industry, then your overhead would be less.
I'll say it again for the umteenth time - the alledged bad bahavior of leaders is no excuse for continuing to old ways - no Quid Pro Quo in the eyes of the taxpayer.

[citymouse]

The bad behaviour is not alleged.I will say it again if you want to change the situation you have to start at the top. When the worker see the Mayor or county exec or whoever say I don't need five deputys and directors. We can spend that money on some equipment instead, When they stop seeing the department head go to that equipment convention\golf outing in palm springs or Las Vegas as the guest of some local dealer whose product they buy next time around, then they'll know the administration means business.
In 1995 the mayor of Buffalo cried poverty and how we all had to start re-thinking how we negotiated if we wanted to protect our jobs. Because they had binding arbitration the police and fire units would not talk to him. They got heftey percentage raises in thier contracts. The white collar unit went to impasse and the common council imposed a one year contract giving them a 3% raise.( When the union and city reaches impasse and the union in question does not have binding arbitration the council can impose a one year settlement but, by law, can not make any changes in language or benefits, it only can award a raise if they choose.)
Local 264, the blue collar unit decided that maybe the mayor had a point and chose to bargin in good faith, they took a three year settlement with a zero in the first year and accepted a less costly health care plan then Blue Cross and Blue Shield.They chose independent health saving the city millions but with reduced coverage.
They passed this contract by a close vote, because they thought they were doing the right thing for themselves(protecting thier jobs) and the tax payers (providing service at lower cost to help the city with it's financial plight), a few days before christmas. The day after it passed the mayor increased the pay of all his staff raising all of them from between four thousand to nine thousand dollars a year. If you don't belive me check the papers.
How do you expect the unions to trust these guys or belive anything they say?

[WNYresident]

CityMouse states:

start at the top.


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As in Mayor, County exec, governor?

I really would like to know what these people really do. All day meetings? Do they do paper work? Or are they just figure heads that go from meeting to meeting?

[WNYresident]

When they stop seeing the department head go to that equipment convention\golf outing in palm springs or Las Vegas as the guest of some local dealer whose product they buy next time around, then they'll know the administration means business.

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Definate NO NO. They are not spending thier money, they are spending my money and your money. I expect it spent as carefully as I would spend it.

[WNYresident]

The day after it passed the mayor increased the pay of all his staff raising all of them from between four thousand to nine thousand dollars a year. If you don't belive me check the papers.

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Yes... tacky on thier part isn't it.

[Curmudgeon]

How do you expect the unions to trust these guys or belive anything they say?

You treat job classifications as if they should all be treated the same. Nonsense. Perhaps the mayor was harder on the blue collar union because there are more workers (rank and file) than in other classifications. Perhaps the difference in market-value to actual wages is much higher than in the other job types.

Where I work, Does the janitor (unskilled) demand the same raise percentage as the machinist (skilled trades) or the engineer (licenced professional) or accountant (management)? Hell, no!

As for his staff, who serve at his descretion, perhaps they were given raises because he saw some of his top people getting better offers in the private sector and he wanted to keep his staff. When was the last time a garbageman or streets guy got lured away by a better job offer? Probably never. His timing on the annoucements was stupid for sure, but you can't run around looking at what everybody else is making to see what you should get. That's not how it works in the real world.

As for trust: I once worked for a guy who said "all I owe you is a paycheck and all you owe me is a weeks work". Sounded fair to me..

[citymouse]

You always seem to miss the point. You can't plead poverty for others and then turn around a spend on yourself like a drunken sailor. That's what these guy's do time after time. Do as I say not as I do.
As for what the top elected officials do: when Vinny Lovallo was the mayors chief of staff he was quoted in the newspaper as saying "the mayor should be out of his office every day by one o'clock".
Why? To cut ribbions and kiss babies? Lifting garbage is harder than that and requires more thought.
Did you ever hear about leading by example? They obviously haven't. Maybe the blue collar guys were trying to. The Mayor was not bieng any harder on blue collar then any other union, 264 just fell for his line of bull that was more for public perception than actual substance.
It's like this residency thing. The city will get the forms from the employees and the paper will hear they did and then it will fade away and nothing will be done.
You know I am right, look at the HUD money we lost as far as the media and public is concearned the issue is forgotten, swept under the rug. We lost over seven million dollars and all he said was "some one will answer for this" and it ended there. This type of thing has happened time after time with this guy and every one say's its the workers fault or there are too many of them. If you ask me, or even if you don't, I say we have one too many mayors and one too many county exec's.
How about in Sundays every body's column in the news. A woman wrote complaining sarcasticly that the city cut police and fire but her leaves were picked up at night. She assumed it was on overtime. The streets department works crews for straight time on all shifts in the winter for plowing purposes. A storm can hit at any time, as anyone who lives here knows, and crews are on duty to cover that twnty four hours a day and not at overtime. When there is no snow or the threat of snow is not in the picture on any given day the crews, rather then sit around waiting for it to snow, will pick up trash or leaves or mark fire hydrants or broom accident scenes, etc.
Also, it makes a diffrence when you plow snow along a curb if you don't have piles of leaves mixed in.
The news dosen't care although they know better, and will let these wrong conclusions be printed where the public sees them and thinks these guy's are getting overtime, and the worker takes another hit in the public eye.

[citymouse]

By the way , Crum, one conclusion I seem to be drawing from things you have said: you have had a lot of different jobs, and most of them sucked.