I respect the state workers and I respect their unions, but we simply can't afford to pay benefits and pensions that are out of line with economic reality.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
People have to be reminded that unions played a very historic role in our economy.
What's going on in this country? Unions stand against those trends. We've got to somehow insulate the robust American economy from this global economy that seems to want to devour our standard of living.
We can't be paying pensions to the next generation of federal workers when hardly anyone in the private sector gets them.
Public employee unions, in their defense, say politicians have unfairly made them into simplistic bogeymen, responsible for problems that have myriad causes. Not all government workers receive generous pensions, they note.
Several unions have agreed to larger employee contributions for their members. Taxpayers are living with cuts and making sacrifices to deal with the reality of California's budget crisis, state workers are going to have to do the same.
I sometimes think that unions don't understand that we live in a free society, and people have the right to not select union representation if they don't want it.
Public unions are big money.
Many people do not realize that where unions have bargaining rights employers cannot raise wages or improve benefit plans any more than they can reduce them without of the consent of the union.
The unions claim the deck is stacked against them when it comes to labor laws, but the truth is many private and public sector workers are forced to pay union dues as a condition of their employment, yet they have little say in how the unions spend their money.
I respect public employees and school teachers. They deserve a secure retirement.
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