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Jul 31, 2008, 20:35 GMT
Schwarzenegger cuts 22,000 jobs to tackle cash crisis
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Older Talkback
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It's time for all the excessively rich people in California to step up to the plate and help their State. Taxes on the rich must be increased.
It's always the poor state workers that have to suffer for their administrators inadaquencies. I hope ole Swartzy gave himself the minimun wage also.
't's time for all the excessively rich people in California to step up to the plate and help their State'
Excessively rich? Go earn something so I can call you excessively rich.
Californians pay some of the highest taxes in the USA. It's time for the government to stop wasting their money.
California has the world's 8th largest economy...crafting a budget for something that huge is super difficult. I tried my hand at it using the California Budget Challenge. The Challenge allows you to decide what to spend and what to tax. Even if you don't live in California it's interesting to see what makes the budget-making process so difficult!! Try it! www.next10.org/challenge
Federal and states waste taxpayers' money disgustingly.
I am finally impressed with the terminator. It is about time. As an over taxed Californian who watches my tax dollars spent so wastfully on stupid social engineering programs, I'M IMPRESSED.
Would you want to work for a company that treats all workers exactly the same, no matter how hard they work? What about one that promotes only on the basis of seniority and not merit?
Few Americans want a job with an employer who ignores their individual efforts. Yet that’s what labor unions offer employees today. Small wonder membership is steadily declining.
The premise of collective bargaining is that by representing all employees a union can negotiate a better collective contract than each worker could get through individual negotiations. But because the union negotiates collectively, the same contract covers every worker, regardless of his or her productivity or effort.
In the manufacturing economy of the 1930s, this worked reasonably well. An employee’s unique talents and skills made little difference on the assembly line.
INDIVIDUAL ABILITIES
In today’s knowledge economy, however, collective representation makes little sense. Machines perform most of the repetitive manufacturing tasks of yesteryear. Employers now want employees with individual insights and abilities. The fastest-growing occupations over the past quarter-century have been professional, technical, and managerial in nature. The jobs of the future include Web designers, interior decorators, and public-relations specialists, among others.
These jobs depend on the creativity and skills of individual employees. Few workers today want a one-size-fits-all contract that ignores what they individually bring to the bargaining table. Union-negotiated, seniority-based promotions and raises feel like chains to workers who want to get ahead.
Additionally, economic changes mean that unions can no longer deliver large gains to their members. Unions boast that their members earn higher wages than non-union workers. But they don’t create money out of thin air. They use their bargaining power to take it from someone else. Contrary to popular impression, that someone is usually not business owners. It is consumers, who pay higher prices when companies pass on the added cost of the union-wage bill.
But companies can pass union costs on only when customers cannot shop elsewhere. Deregulation and free trade have increased competition, and benefit both consumers and the economy. NAFTA alone saves a typical family $2,000 a year. But increased competition also means that unions cannot win above-market wages through collective bargaining. Companies no longer have monopoly profits to afford those inflated wages.
Take General Motors, which used to pay its janitors and security workers the union rate of $75 an hour. When Toyota and Honda started selling better cars for less, they drove GM to the brink of bankruptcy and forced the United Auto Workers to agree to new contracts paying market rates. As this has happened at company after company, the difference between union and non-union wages has steadily shrunk.
SELECTIVE HIRING
The average union member still earns more than the average non-union member, but not because unions are skilled negotiators. It’s because unionized companies become very selective about whom they hire.
Since unions make it virtually impossible to lay off under-performing workers, unionized companies take pains to hire more productive workers in the first place. The typical union member naturally earns higher wages–with or without general representation. New workers who vote to join a union, however, do not earn more than they would have if they had stayed non-union.
These modern realities are colliding with problems that have long turned off workers–corruption, unaccountable leadership, and members’ dues funding union bosses’ lavish salaries. Not to mention excessive political activism. Unions have announced plans to spend $300 million to defeat John McCain. That’s great news if you’re a partisan Democrat–less so if you’re a rank-and-file worker whose dues foot the bill.
THE PUBLIC SECTOR
The one sector where unions remain relevant is the government. Almost half of all union members now work in the public sector. The typical union member today works for the DMV, not on the assembly line.
Unions fit more comfortably into government workplaces than the private sector. Government employees are used to bureaucracy that does little to reward individual initiative. And the government faces no competition.
The state of Virginia won’t go bankrupt, no matter how much public-sector unions ask for in wages. The state can just raise taxes on everyone else. It’s no accident that the typical government employee earns substantially more than an equivalently skilled private-sector worker. Whether it is fair that government unions push for higher taxes to pay their inflated salaries is another question.
The upshot is that unions today have little to offer workers outside of government. By a more than 3-to-1 margin, non-union workers tell pollsters they are happy to stay that way, and union membership has fallen steadily over the past generation. Fewer than one in 25 Virginia workers today belong to a union.
Unions naturally want to reverse their decline. But rather than reform to become relevant, unions want to take away a worker’s right to vote on joining a union.
Currently workers join unions through secret-ballot elections. If a majority of employees votes in privacy for a union, their company is organized, but neither their employer nor the union knows how each employee voted. This allows workers to vote their convictions.
Now organized labor has thrown its weight behind the little-known “Employee Free Choice Act.” This misnamed bill abolishes secret-ballot organizing elections and allows unions to press workers to publicly sign a union representation contract.
Where no-vote unions are allowed, unions do not take “no” for an answer. Unions train organizers to give workers a high-pressure sales pitch and push them to immediately sign on. If a worker refuses, organizers return again and again to press him to change his mind. Some organizers threaten workers who will not join.
Not surprisingly, unions can organize most workplaces where workers are denied a vote. But making it difficult for workers to refuse to join will not make unions more attractive. Nor will it change the competitive realities that prevent unions from raising wages by passing on costs to consumers. Unless unions rethink how they represent workers they will remain irrelevant to 21st-century employees.
Good. Now the government workers are getting paid what they’re worth. Hope the gov makes the pay cut permanent. But we know this is only a symbolic move that will try to sway people to agree to massive tax increases. Don’t fall for it. It’s time to cut, cut, cut. More revenue than ever is pouring into the state government. 41% more than when Schwartzenegger took office! The problem is with SPENDING! Lay off and cut budgets. Let the public sector feel the pain for once. Get rid of 30% of the public teachers. Enrollment is way down. We don’t need the extra state employees on the books. Dump the riff-raff.
Arnold has finally done something productive. He may actually have a small piece of his testicles left. I truly believed he had surrendered them both to Maria and Fabio. Now fire this idiot Chiang and lets get on with creating a realistic, fair budget where the private sector is not continuing to fund lavish compensation packages for all their public servants, that they don’t even have for themselves .
And here’s just one more Idea to help close the budget gap: Stop printing government literature in anything but ENGLISH.
I’m sure you guys have lots of others.
IN NOVEMBER, MAKE SURE YOU VOTE TO REQUIRE VOTER APPROVAL OF ALL FUTURE RETIREMENT PLAN INCREASES FOR COUNTY EMPLOYEES IN OC!!
Barack Obama as next President of The United States of America
The die is cast and for reasons that only a privileged few know, you Sir, will be the next President of the United States of America. Your next 4 years will be a turning point in US history and planet earth. CHANGE, your advisors and high stake investors offer the nation will undoubtedly be the same rhetoric and empty promises that make up a political campaign, that campaigns for appointment for any public office in America.
The White House will be the Black House to some, the Aryan Brothers of America will not be so happy, but yet will blame you and your staff if you fail, which will reinforce their belief that the Aryan Nation is the true leader for America. The religious zealots will be busy bees making nests to survive the onslaught of lies, corruption and deceit. Business enterprises and other competing nations will capitalize off of your inexperience in the art of corruption and murder. The organized crime organizations from different nations including our own will benefit from the lack of control over national crime.
Military governments including our own will test your tolerance to pain and deception and trick you into needless and profitable domestic and international conflict. You will no doubt attempt to colorize your staff to soften the race conflict once in office.
As President you will be President. Nations will respect you only for your title of office. Americans will soon see after your appointment as President that your intentions were manipulated by those that make the rules. You will fill the spot in history as planned, and nothing more.
You will never while in office be able to pull the troops from conflict in any land we are engaged in. As a matter of fact we as a nation will be engaged in a new conflict of war, which will galvanize Americans to seek a different form of government and a different and honest Congress.
You will attempt to shore up Americas problems with false promise and lies, because you cannot directly affect the CHANGE you promised.
Your frustration will be your downfall while in office, and your co-dependence on those that you trust will also add to your demise.
Our Armed Forces in rank will respect you as good soldiers they are, but those under them will not, and for good reasons, that only a good soldier knows.
America will not be America until its government respects the People, and tells the truth. America is a Republic, not a Democracy or Fascist Government or is it?
Until you can walk thru the streets and neighborhoods of America unaided by Secret Service or any other law enforcement agency you will not be respected by the many, only by the fearful and selfish few. Americans can protect their leaders if they are honest and respectful of the people they were elected to serve. Our Government has forsaken us for many hundreds of years, and now we will wait until your 4 years are finished for us to come to fruition.
CHANGE FOR AMERICA FOR AMERICANS!
The American Republic
A Sovereign Republic
at least Arnold is doing what goverments should do...is their job, and not spend themselves into getting votes. Most politals would try and spend themselves into the good will of gullable voters. Unions like to shoot themselves in their own foot...A worker that is multi taskable is a valuable worker, a worker who watches the clock and produces as much as the lazies worker next to them is not a valuable worker. If you Unions were smart they would weed out the lazy workers who make Unions look bad.
These lazy workers are the most vocal about Unions, but they only use Unions so they can lounge and relax and not produce a product or service the customer needs cause they know the Union will come and protect them from their lazy assed work ethic.
have come home. More victimization of the poor and underemployed in america. Rather than come up with a real solution, let's just transfer the problem over to the unemployment benefits office.
'More victimization of the poor and underemployed in america[sic].'
Some of these useless paper pushers make six figures.
HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!! MORE UNIMPLOYMENT,YAY!!!!!!!!!
and you are a fricking moron. When has a part timer or seasonal employee, temporary worker, student assistant earned 6 figures? It is you who is useless except as stuffing for a body bag. Do something for your country. Enlist and get posted to Afghanistan.
...god, it's about time...
Well it is about time! Now, maybe the State of California, will observe, that programs such as ESL ( English As A Second Language, and Illegal Immigrant Care) is costly. As for the State Employees, you have been put
on notice; Do your job!! The State of California, should have done this
years ago. Economics 101 - Downsizing nonproductive employees, and cutting
wasteful spending. Hopefully, State Freeways and Highways will be repaired.
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