City Budget and Unions

[C K Dexter Haven]

From Cecil's Mail:

Hi Cecil,

My question concerns the City's budgetary problems:

If the city's workforce were not unionized, how much would the city's taxpayers save?

This could be stated in absolute terms, as a percentage and per capita. I'm mighty curious about this one.

I ask this because, not only are we paying way too much in taxation (just compare with other cities), but also because I think unions have negotiated their own good terms at the expense of the rest of the population with similar skill sets. It's fine to have good terms from one's employer, but shouldn't that be for everyone and so enshrined into law? You could view this as simply boiling down to the strong trampling over the weak. I siuspect that de-unionizing the city workforce would save taxpayers a huge amount, but when property owners whine about taxes they never suggest this. Daley certainly won't bite this bullet.

Of course this hypothesis need extrapolating through county, state and federal levels of government too.

Thanks for considering!

Yours fraterally,
Man_on_da_Street

[carsarenotthefuture]

You're right.

The problem with our budget is that people who perform vital tasks that make our city run get benefits, pensions and better pay than other workers without representation.

That's it. Plain and simple.

Let's yank those peoples benefits, pensions, job security and sink their wages. I mean, if other workers in other industries don't have the benefits that union representation brings, it's unfair for municipal employees to have those benefits. Let's not let anyone off the hook, let's make sure everyone gets screwed.

And while we're at it, like you say, let's lower taxes on everyone living in the Gold Coast. They deserve a tax break, since they do all the hard work in this city. I mean, half the trouble they have is all the taxes they have to pay because, as you point out, municipal employees have a union to get them health benefits, pensions, etc.

I totally agree with you -it would be completely unfair to expect everyone in the city to make sacrifices in order to sustain vital municipal institutions, roads, transit, museums, garbage collection, etc. It's ridiculous to make everyone make sacrifices for things we all depend on -let's make the municipal employees make all the sacrifices. They're after all, like you say, the ones with all the real power in this city. Health benefits, pensions, decent wages, overtime...those greedy jerks... who do they think they are!?