nods Makes sense. I wouldn’t be opposed to closing that avenue, or at least expecting that extracurriculars adjunct to the main salary not be considered for pensions unless they met the same requirements. To clarify: suppose a school district offers a pension after 25 years of teaching. They pay a basketball coach $1000/semester extra as a stipend. If that teacher wants the stipend to count for his pension calculations, he’d have to have been coaching basketball for 25 years–because at that point, it’s clearly been part of his career-length service to the district, as opposed to some crap he tagged on just to stack his pension.
Sure it’s safe. Unless someone higher up decides to send as much work as possible offshore and get it done more cheaply, regardless of how good you were and how often you showed up to do the work.
Sure it’s safe. Unless you’re let go because the younger ones are cheaper to pay, regardless of how many days they take off and how little they perform.
Yep its just coincidence.
Same way muslims tend to coincidnetally be brown (or at least not white) people.
I am familiar with pension spiking and its abusive and we should curb the abuse but ponting out ath some guy that worked 4200 hours made $133K as an example of overpaid government worker is either deceptive or Cheesy didn’t read the entire article before he latched onto the headline.
The answer to pension spiking has always been a cap on creditable overtime IOW, you only contribute to your pension out of your regular pay and overtime does not count towards your pension (or you say you can only exceed your base pay by 25 or 50% or whatever you want to negotiate).
No, that was Joe’s investment in himself. I’m not sure how you don’t realize that, and I wonder if that misconception is what causes the confusion in this thread. Joe took zero risk working at the widget press. Zero. He stands to lose nothing. There is no opportunity cost for Joe. He’s either working at this widget press, or the one down the street.
If Joe had deferred his income and instead bought a faster widget press, that would be an investment in the company. If he used his experience to develop a faster/cheaper way to make widgets, patented it, then allowed the company to use that patent, he would be making an investment in the company.
Showing up for work every day is NOT an investment in the company. Now, if after 15 years of experience, Joe was a better/faster/smarter widget maker, his investment would have paid off. He would be worth more, and would be rewarded with higher compensation.
The issue we’re dealing with in this thread is that there are too many jobs where after 15 years there is no experience gained. It’s the same bus route, over and over and over. Unless Joe can show that his experience has made him more valuable, there is no reason to pay him more–even with inflation. Yes, you read that right. The value of the person pushing the button that moves the widget press actually goes down over time when indexed against inflation. Why? Because the value of the widget is going down with time. The iPad 1 is now worth considerably less then it was when released. So why should the guy making it earn 3% more?
If a semi-literate Scotsman can wash ashore in a storm, and enter the same numbers, and press the same button, you have no job security. You might as well flee the island.
Uh, what? I don’t believe that factory jobs are easy, and it doesn’t matter what I think a job is worth. Society, the one you are a part of, has decided what jobs are worth less than others. And when you go to a store to make a purchase, you are part of that decision. We call it a market based economy. One where you are free to choose which product you buy, amongst a series of competitors. Would you like a system were unions forced you to buy one item instead of another? Or *required *you to pay more? Or reduced competition/supply?
If someone else can do your job faster/better/cheaper than you, that person is worth more. That’s not meant as an insult, it is the basis of our economy. Just as you go out to a store and choose to buy things that are faster/better/cheaper. You have no problem assessing the value of an item in a store.
As a general rule, that is a TERRIBLE idea. You have both your savings and your earnings tied up in one place. If the company fails, the stock will fall and you’ll lose your job. Meaning at the same time you lose your job, you also lose your savings. But that’s unrelated to this topic, just something I’d like to point out from experience.
Look, there is nothing wrong with starting a co-op, and I don’t know what more unions don’t go that route. Buying company stock (in significant portions) means you are making an investment in the company. Remember Joe with his 15 years experience? That wasn’t an investment because there was no risk. Buying stock is an investment that carries risk. And as a result you will be rewarded when the company profits. See how easy that was? You didn’t need a union for that. If you want to share in the profits, we have a system in place that allows you to. But in return you have to share in the risk.
Every quarter you will get paid dividends which represent a share of the profits. Profits made by paying employees as little as they can get away with. And conversely charging customers as much as they are willing to pay. Is that shocking to hear? I worry Snowboarder Bo will think less of me, but there you have it, I charge my customers are much as they are willing to pay, and not a penny less.
If your company paid employees more (or sold for less), there would be less profit and a smaller dividend. If your company failed to earn profits (and more importantly failed to grow) the stock price would fall and your savings would be lost.
But what you said is extremely important: You made an investment in your company. You put your money at risk. If the company succeeds you will be rewarded, if it fails, you will take a loss. The people that make an investment in the company get rewarded.
If you have a *skill *to offer, your company will reward you. To them you are an asset they invest in. They will pay for your training, they will pay for your relocation, they will make you happy. Why? Because if you have skill you are taking a risk working with them and they know that. There is an opportunity cost to you, as the world’s foremost widget designer. You need the company to succeed to build your reputation and further your skills. You have to choose to not work at a competitor, and are taking a risk.
And I think that’s great. If it makes your company profit, they should continue to do it, and investors should continue to buy stock. I don’t know what sort of impression I’ve given, but the point here is to make profit. If your company can continue to excel using your business model then by all means continue. I’m all for profit sharing and treating employees well. But at the end of the day it’s business. If someone isn’t performing they need to be replaced. If another company finds a way to do what you do but sell for slightly less, then what?
The owners face risk in the market place. At any moment the tide may turn and sales might slow. New competitors emerge. Governments intervene, laws change, recessions happen. Profits and rewards go to those that take risk.
I fully agree. Why do you suppose unions are so adversarial?
That’s wrong. As exemplified in this thread, there are a select group of individuals that ALWAYS want to unionize. The sad reality is that a union is a business like any other. It has employees and makes money. The union president wants power, he gets that power by increasing his numbers. Eventually, a union will approach a non-union shop and seek to include it. Regardless of how happy the employees are, the union doesn’t care about “happiness” it wants numbers, numbers are power. And as mentioned many times here, unions need power to offset the power of corporations.
There are three Michelin plants in Nova Scotia with happy workers, while the rest of the North American plants are unionized. Every couple of years United Steelworkers tries to unionize them. Why? It’s not a drive starting from within. It’s not the result of poor work conditions. The United Steelworkers Union wants those members.
I don’t believe that’s true. Employees are just as fickle as employers. They have no problem jumping ship when times are tough. If your competitor was hiring while your company was making pay cuts, do you really believe employees would stick around? For how long?
That’s the flip side of the argument no one ever wants to acknowledge. People spend so much time focusing on when the employer has power, they forget the times when the employee has power.
Maybe, when the stock price is going up. But what do they do when the stock price falls? How many will dump their stock? And when the stock price jumps, how many take profits?
Out of curiosity, are their conditions on your stock purchase? Do you get it at a 15% discount quarterly, but have to hold it for a year?
And I welcome that competition. Why? Because I like a market economy. I like having the opportunity to compete. If your company is successful I will gladly dissect it, figure out what you’re doing right, and emulate it to my benefit.
But the actions you described are not a “guarantee” of success. You might think I’m a cold and heartless bastard, paying my employees “as little as I can get away with.” But I assure you your customers are far worse, and trying everything they can to pay you as little as they can get away with. If they can find the same product for less, what guarantee do you have they won’t switch?
There is, logically speaking, an accidental correlation. You wish to push this into something that implies a causal relationship. But the correlation is explained simply by the “accident” that:
- those most likely to sneak into the U.S are those from an adjacent country and
- from a country that deprives them of the type of opportunities they can take advantage of in the U.S.
For the U.S, the two adjacent countries are Canada and Mexico. Canadians enjoy opportunities similar to the U.S., so there is no strong desire to come here. Certainly not strong enough to do so illegally and/or risk their lives in doing so. That leaves people coming from Mexico, whose corruption and drug cartel problems have kept the country almost in the third world. So, it makes perfect sense that Mexicans would be those with the desire to sneak in. That would be true if they were white, black, or Asian. If you pick a country in another time and place, the same factors would be motivating people to leave their home country for another.
So, your insistence that the desire to keep illegals out of the U.S. is racist is just you intent in applying your own biases to facts. It’s just another cry of RACISM!!! from the left.
Yawn.
I just re-watched an interview from February with Oregon’s new governor (Kitzhaber-D). He had the same sorts of things to say about having to use different options for public employees, such as contributing to health plans, etc. Very much like Wisconsin’s guv. The difference: no mention of gutting union rights or other union-busting moves, or threatening workers if they don’t agree. Unlike Walker, he understands that you can always just say “no” to union negotiators in the next go-round.
And just as a side note: Fox commentators should be ashamed of their recent attacks on teachers and the working class in general. We all know that they are required to spout whatever Murdoch dictates, but this present round that villifies people who actually have to work for a living is just contemptible.
Contemptible but not surprising.