LLH
Lost Localhost

Totally Schlitzed...

People are going crazy lately. Screaming about what they're owed, crazy dictators, countries talking about reparations for wartime damage, riots against supreme leaders. Things in Egypt sure are crazy...or is it Iran? I actually think it was Madison? Yes, I think all that happened in Wisconsin.

WS Governor wants teachers to pay %5.8 of their wages toward retirement and %12.6 to their healthcare. Big whoop. The private sector pays about twice that much. Unions are shady. Not the union workers, but the way they are run, which basically is a form of extortion and other legal scary terms. (I lost interest in becoming a laywer a long while ago)

The BigO's take?
"I haven't followed exactly what's happening" [...]
"Some of what I've heard coming out of WS where you're just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally seems like an assault on unions"

I agree. It's a true statement on the surface of the definition of a labor union. To remove bargaining power of a group of workers is to remove the purpose of a "group" of workers. I'm still in the belief that unions do their work in shady ways and that alone should remove their bargaining power - but it shouldn't come from a simple mandate from legislature. Ultimately, the goal of most unions is to improve working conditions. What if the work conditions are so good that you don't have to perform well to earn more than everyone else? Eventually something has to give and the public will not stand for it. Teachers are hard to peg. I know some teachers that are amazing at their job. I also know that they have to struggle to be great because the system is a joke.

LLHost's fair solution:
  • Get rid of unions, as they exist today. Make it an equal playing field for everyone.
  • If any worker, or group of workers, do not like their work environment, they bring it up with the employer. If the employer will not negitiate, the worker, or workers, have the right to quit...just like in the private sector. (Also just like state sovereignty - Don't like your state laws? You have the freedom to move) Negotiation stops there. You leave work to strike and the employer wants to fire you, you're done.
  • Base perks on performance, with caps.
    • Do well, you get more.
    • Do as expected you stay the same, sans COLA
    • Don't do well, you lose perks
    • Do badly, you're fired.
  • As for this teacher item...
    • Pay good teachers what they deserve. They are horribly underpaid.
    • Fire non-effective teachers immediately. It is far too difficult to remove horrible teachers thanks to unions.
    • Remove tenure completely
Simple. Well, the ideas are - implementation may take some debate.




 As an addition to my last post...
The newest press secretary, Jay Carney, apparently wants us to know that the stimulus did exactly what it was suppose to and its goals "have been met". When asked about how that was true, yet unemployment went up (as I noted in my last post) he gave a very simple, straight to the point answer...

"We've said repeatedly that we don't want to relitigate the battles of the past"

Uhhhh, that's it? Yet another situation where if it was the real world, both Jay and the people who implemented the stimulus package would be fired.

Watch the video at RCP.

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