Tom Moran says it took “real leadership” for the state Senate to change the state’s pension and benefit rules.
I’d call it shortsighted — and not because it has angered the state’s public worker unions.
The problem with the reform bill, which passed today, is that it accelerates the race to the bottom. The argument being made is that public worker benefits must be brought in line with private sector ones, that the public workers are getting a free ride paid for by the rest of us. It is a brilliant move, of course, because it divides workers, pitting them against each other and ending any chance that workers will act in unison and demand better retirement and health benefits.
Instead, we have private sector folks demanding that public worker benefits be gutted, that they be made to deal with the same crappy benefits offered by the private sector.
The problems we face were created by state legislators and governors of both parties who refused to pay what was needed into the state pension fund over the last two decades and who have spent longer than that pretending that we can expand services without asking anyone to pay.
And now that the bill has come due, we expect the court clerk and the cop on the beat to cover the tab.
We should be demanding that private sector workers get the same benefits as public workers, that we get the same pension benefits and that the rich — who are paying less in taxes now and who are raking in record profits — cover the costs. That can’t happen as long as we scapegoat unions and public sector workers.
- Send me an e-mail.
- Read poetry at The Subterranean.
- Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
