{"id":9059,"date":"2009-06-04T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-04T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-06-04T21:29:43","modified_gmt":"2009-06-04T21:29:43","slug":"now-is-not-the-time-to-scapegoat-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/06\/04\/now-is-not-the-time-to-scapegoat-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"Now is Not the Time to Scapegoat Workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at the Bee’s “State Worker” Blog<\/a>, Jon Ortiz outlines the arguments he’s been getting in his inbox for scapegoating state workers. Let’s peep through them.<\/p>\n

1) State Workers make an average of $63 thousand dollars, and a median of $66K.<\/i><\/p>\n

Well, this is pretty fun with numbers.  This doesn’t compare what workers make in similar jobs.  See, the thing is that there are a lot more low-income service sector jobs in the general economy than in the state government. Should it be shocking that the average is higher than the economy as a whole? Hardly.<\/p>\n

The state generally pays somewhat under market salary. In return, employees get generally good benefits and hours. One comment on the blog summed it up pretty well:<\/p>\n

When times are good my friends in the private sector mock me for working for the state. While they get stock options, profit sharing, 401-K matches, salary bonuses, expense accounts, corporate parties, Christmas bonuses and company cars; I get a base salary, a couple of more holidays and a pension. Then when the economy sours all of sudden the private sector folks who have been living fat for years think that my crumbs are now fair game. –SacBee user landparkparent<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2) “State workers are pampered.” Meaning that they get one or two additional days off. Interestingly, Ortiz didn’t mention all the great furlough days that state employees have received. Yay, you get a day off…I hope you won’t mind that 5% I’m taking from your pay check. Now you kids go have a good time.<\/p>\n

Again, this goes back to the above comment, and now with everything that’s happened in the last few months, state workers really aren’t getting the extra holidays. Proposals are already on the table, and look set to be approved to take away those holidays. <\/p>\n

3) Retiree benefits. OMG! State workers have a government supported, “defined benefit” plan.  You mean like the ones that everybody used to have until the Republicans created the 401(K).  What this argument is saying is the same thing Republicans have been saying for years: it would be a great idea to privatize social security.<\/p>\n

The thing is, America solidly rejected the privatization of social security. And, in a few places, we’ve held out privatizing retirement plans. That should continue.<\/p>\n

4) State Worker Unions have too much power. You mean these people can band together to negotiate and advocate for their rights? Of all the nerve! That state workers are able to effectively advocate isn’t a bug of the system, it is a feature.  And of course, the same thing could be said about the rich, corporations, and pretty much any “special interest”. How dare the rich spend all that money on elections! Where’s the outrage that Chevron is constantly buying the system?<\/p>\n

I don’t doubt that Ortiz is getting a lot of emails complaining about state workers. But just because somebody sends you something in an email, doesn’t make it true.  Otherwise, I’d be extremely wealthy, have unlimited stashes of cheap pharmaceuticals, and be living as the King of Nigeria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at the Bee’s “State Worker” Blog<\/a>, Jon Ortiz outlines the arguments he’s been getting in his inbox for scapegoating state workers. Let’s peep through them.<\/p>\n

1) State Workers make an average of $63 thousand dollars, and a median of $66K.<\/i><\/p>\n

Well, this is pretty fun with numbers.  This doesn’t compare what workers make in similar jobs.  See, the thing is that there are a lot more low-income service sector jobs in the general economy than in the state government. Should it be shocking that the average is higher than the economy as a whole? Hardly.<\/p>\n

The state generally pays somewhat under market salary. In return, employees get generally good benefits and hours. One comment on the blog summed it up pretty well:<\/p>\n

When times are good my friends in the private sector mock me for working for the state. While they get stock options, profit sharing, 401-K matches, salary bonuses, expense accounts, corporate parties, Christmas bonuses and company cars; I get a base salary, a couple of more holidays and a pension. Then when the economy sours all of sudden the private sector folks who have been living fat for years think that my crumbs are now fair game. –SacBee user landparkparent<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2) “State workers are pampered.” Meaning that they get one or two additional days off. Interestingly, Ortiz didn’t mention all the great furlough days that state employees have received. Yay, you get a day off…I hope you won’t mind that 5% I’m taking from your pay check. Now you kids go have a good time.<\/p>\n

Again, this goes back to the above comment, and now with everything that’s happened in the last few months, state workers really aren’t getting the extra holidays. Proposals are already on the table, and look set to be approved to take away those holidays. <\/p>\n

3) Retiree benefits. OMG! State workers have a government supported, “defined benefit” plan.  You mean like the ones that everybody used to have until the Republicans created the 401(K).  What this argument is saying is the same thing Republicans have been saying for years: it would be a great idea to privatize social security.<\/p>\n

The thing is, America solidly rejected the privatization of social security. And, in a few places, we’ve held out privatizing retirement plans. That should continue.<\/p>\n

4) State Worker Unions have too much power. You mean these people can band together to negotiate and advocate for their rights? Of all the nerve! That state workers are able to effectively advocate isn’t a bug of the system, it is a feature.  And of course, the same thing could be said about the rich, corporations, and pretty much any “special interest”. How dare the rich spend all that money on elections! Where’s the outrage that Chevron is constantly buying the system?<\/p>\n

I don’t doubt that Ortiz is getting a lot of emails complaining about state workers. But just because somebody sends you something in an email, doesn’t make it true.  Otherwise, I’d be extremely wealthy, have unlimited stashes of cheap pharmaceuticals, and be living as the King of Nigeria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[117,419],"tags":[6720],"class_list":["post-9059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-117","category-419","tag-6720"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2m7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}