Teachers, Secretaries, Social Workers: The New Welfare Moms?

[marmar]

from Dollars & Sense:



Teachers, Secretaries and Social Workers:
The New Welfare Moms?

BY RANDY ALBELDA


Conservatives have had their sights on public-sector workers for a while and for good reason. Public-sector workers represent two favorite targets: organized labor and government. I am a public-sector employee and union member, so I can’t help but take these attacks and struggles personally. I am also a veteran of the welfare “reform” battles of the 1990s, and the debates over public-sector workers are strikingly similar.

Like welfare moms, public-sector workers have been painted as greedy , feeding from the public trough and targeted as the primary source of what’s wrong with government today.

Like 1990s welfare-reform debates, this one is dominated by more fiction than fact. For example, previous and recent research consistently shows public-sector workers actually earn less than private-sector workers with comparable skills and experience. While many, but not all, public-sector workers who work long enough for the public sector have a defined-benefit pension, the unfunded portions of those pensions are often due to bad state policy, not union negotiations.

In some states, like my own, Massachusetts, current workers are paying most of their pension costs through their own contributions into interest-bearing pension funds. Because state and local governments with defined pensions do not contribute to social security, there are currently cost savings. The upshot is that the cost of pensions may not be as high as some are arguing. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2011/0511albelda.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. One of the myriad of reasons why I don't like Walmart is the perception that it pays a living wage.

The oblivious American public that goes to Walmart thinks that its "sales associates" can afford to live in a nice middle class neighborhood, pay its mortgage and taxes, send their children to college, afford health insurance, etc. And then they extend their assumption that teachers could learn to get along with less, say, the amount of money in a Walmart paycheck. After all, how hard can it be to babysit children? The kids would learn on their own, with or without teachers. A three-month vacation. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Secretaries and social workers fall into this abyss of assumptions about what they do for a living and whether they deserve their salaries.

I've done all three careers. And never worked harder in my life. I earned every cent.

[ejpoeta]

2. i've taken to questioning those who think teachers make too much about whether THEY

make too much money. they don't tend to like anyone questioning whether they deserve the amount they get paid. somehow it's ok to do it to teachers and other public workers.

[Igel]

3. It's a touchy subject.

It's gotten harden with the push to consider the US something more like a pure democracy and not a republic.

I worked for a church. My salary was paid for by the congregants. However, my boss, the guy who hired me, was the pastor. When people told me that they were my employers I respectfully declined and pointed out that they could not fire me, demote me, dock my wages, or increase my salary. I was paid to support them, but they donated their money to the church and the minister(s) were my employers. They'd go running to the pastor to repeat what I'd said and he'd respond, "Well, was he wrong? Was he disrespectful when he said it?" They eventually went away. The minister had enough spine to not let every member push him around and dictate and second-guess his decisions.

As a teacher, the school board would be my employer, with a lot of authority delegated to the principal. We invest authority in them and are to select them for their ability to take information that we voters don't have access to and, taking the time that we don't have to use skills that we don't have to come up with a course of action that is to serve our, the voters', goals. This requires some respect and trust, and tolerance when the school board does something that I think is stupid but which, if I listened, might further something I want. Or it might be something I dislike, but further the interests of the community as a whole--in which case I should submit my ego to the collective good.

This runs counter to much of mainstream American political thought, in which we don't respect those we elect but consider them our puppets. We don't consider the public good except to the extent we exclusively define ourselves and those like as as "we the people," leaving what may be 70% of the populace as "them the non-people." We confuse the public good and the private good. We insist that what we want is necessarily well-thought out and constitutes the One True Way--and if anybody dares to disagree they're evil and should be ignored as un-American. We act like when have and want purely democratic system when we have a republican form of government. We act like spoiled children. (We've always acted that way, as far as the majority went, with some prominent folk bucking the trend and embarrassing the majority from time to time; now it's a moral virtue to act selfish and virtually nobody dares to buck the trend.)

*This* prevents public employees from saying that the school board or city council or mayor or whoever is their boss and making it stick. Too often a teacher knows that if a parent complains to the principal or school board there's no strong desire to defend the employee but there is a desire to play politics and buckle--there's little downside to it. After all, they're not just elected; their every act is subject to vetting and approval by every individual voter, at least who are outspoken enough. And often the idiots we elect are forced to act this way because in order to get us to elect them they have to promise to be spineless.

[classysassy]

4. The congressional enablers

of the filthy rich who refuse to pay their fair share of the tax burden are disgusting and both need to be dealt with,like expose them for being greedy,hateful and a worthless bunch of blood suckers.Bring back the draft,tax the wealthy at 98% and send their enablers to jail,thats the kind of justice we need.