Punishing Everyday Workers, Legislators Should Cut Their Perks First
It seems as if the votes are there among Republican legislators to rewrite labor law in Wisconsin, thereby eliminating most collective bargaining rights for public employees and, through changes in benefits, effectively cut workers' pay annually about 8-10%.
This is the culmination of years of talking-points regurgitation about mythical, highly-paid public employees who game the system while goofing off, when, in fact, most public workers are modestly-paid everyday Wisconsinites who haul our trash, teach and care for our kids, plow the streets, and make sure the restaurant food you eat and the water you drink from the tap doesn't kill you.
I have a daughter-in-law who teaches middle-school math. She's up at dawn, grades work at night, spends heavily out of her pocketbook on supplies and rewards. And breaks up more heated arguments and scrums on the playing field every week than an average NFL referee handles in a season.
You couldn't entice me to do her job for triple her salary - - yet somehow she has become the scapegoat for a special-interest, self-serving Republican legislature more interested in harming unions than achieving taxpayer equity or better budgeting.
I'd love to see these legislators contribute something to the sacrifice.
How about those tax-free per diem payments for meals and driving expenses of up to $88 day for just setting foot in the Capitol on any given day, including weekends, or when the legislature is out of session?
How many of you get paid for driving to work, and regularly having lunch, too? (I can understand the lodging reimbursement, though many out-state legislators drive in and out and do not rent apartments.)
From a 2009 Legislative Reference Bureau paper on legislative compensation:
"...each legislator may claim a “per diem” allowance for food and lodging expenses for each day spent in Madison on legislative business. The current maximum allowance for legislators who establish a temporary residence at the capital is $88 per day; for legislators who do not establish residence, the maximum is half that amount ($44).Some legislators receive more than $10,000 this way a year in gravy from the state treasury and they don't have to report it as income.
Legislators are also reimbursed for certain travel expenses and receive an allowance to cover general office expenses, printing, and postage."
How about the mileage reimbursements they get by simply filling in a form for driving around their districts to bean feeds and church suppers and high school graduations?
How about the free cell phones?
There are plenty of legislators who, with these tax-free, taxpayer-supplied benefits earn far more than their $49,000, part-time annual salary- - and far more than the average school teacher or plow operator or crossing guard.
And if legislators want to argue that the perks are justified and their salaries are truly modest, then acknowledge the same is true for typical public employees - - and get off their backs.
5 comments:
Only people who have little or no idea what it takes to staff government positions would support Scott Walker. It seems that as long as the cuts do not affect
his "pals" the cuts are necessary. If these "pals" and Walker were told to not receive compensation, pay taxes for their perks or had to pay for the insurance they enjoy (not the state employee insurance), you would probably be hearing of how necessary these increases are to retain good people. As a former state worker, I can say there have been many years in which the state employees received a small raise and were told to pay more money for insurance. You don't advance montarly, you go backwards. It has been a long standing tradition for the state budgets to be balanced on the backs of the state workers. It is time this practice comes to a halt.
Being a state employee does not mean you are lazy, over paid and don't care. With very few exceptions, state employees are (and have been for years) accomplishing their jobs with deminishing assets, decreasing salaries and benefits. Yet they show up every day to serve the citizens of Wisconsin. Mr. Walker needs to be stopped NOW. If he should win this battle, this will be followed by massive layoffs. While he states this is not true, Mr. Walker has shown that what he says and what he does are two entirely different things.
Your points about legislators' perks are excellent, but leave out a major benefit: Though legislators are considered "part time", they receive the same benefits that full-time employees do: A-1 health care coverage and a pension to boot, plus opportunities to purchase reasonably-priced life insurance, disability insurance and other benefit goodies that the state, with its large group purchasing power, has negotiated with providers.
All of the privileges, but none of the responsibilities of a full-time employee: no boss breathing down your neck, no clock to punch, no attendance taken at legislative sessions, committee meetings or mandatory hours.
Plus sick time! Unused sick time gets toted up until retirement, at which time sick pay can then be used to to pay for post-retirement health care insurance.
In addition to the "part-time" wages earned of approx. $47,000 per annum**, our state legislators can take other jobs--again, with no accountability for their time, salaries earned, or type of work that may conflict with (or in the best of all possible scenarios--enhance) their legislative roles.
(Russ Decker worked as a lobbyist for a road builder DURING his last term of office!!!!!
Mark Gundrum spent a year in Irag, doing his duty as part of the National Guard (thank you, Mark, for that), presumably collecting his military combat pay, but also collecting his legislative pay, all while his constituents went unrepresented for the better part of a year. Even before he went to Iraq, he was infamous for not being in the capitol on Wednesdays, one of only three days legislators gather there to conduct the peoples' business. Wednesdays were the days he met with clients for his other job, municipal lawyer.
And am I remembering right that during one of the last Republican-controlled Assemblies--perhaps when Scooter the Looter Jensen was still plying his tricks in the Ledge--they voted to increase their staffs, and added staff to Committee Chairs, Speakers, leaders of both houses, etc., something to the tune of $12 million buckeroos for just one year?
I betcha that legislative aides and staff are exempt from the proposed cut-backs.
Our legislators are the "state workers" who deserve our scorn. They're cynical looters who specialize in double-dipping and double-crossing while calling for smaller government and budget cuts to be borne by everyone but them--state office workers, field staff and technical workers. Who then have their professionalism and public service trashed in ads by the Wisconsin Club for Growth as people who "aren't doing their share."
It's unconscionable.
** I know PLENTY of people who would be THRILLED to work three days a week, at max only 8 months of the year, some years only 3 or 4 months, for a $47,000 thou a year job with great, full-time benefits.
If being a public sector worker is such a living hell, why don't you/they all go find a job in the private sector?
Which is a question that answers itself.
Max Berger - - Thanks.
Anonymous 2/16/11 6:45 a.m.: Everyone makes choices in life. Don't make other's pay for your choice of working in the private sector. I have worked in the private and public sector. I chose the public sector after many years in the private sector. I watched workers being targeted by a supervisor because they were older or had a disability. At least in the public sector there are more directives and guidelines available to prohibit those actions.
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