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Scott,

Are you suggesting that all government union workers are hard working just like you and none are harder working or lesser working than you? If so you're all robots. If not, then the unions are falsely protecting the weak and under performing workers from being treated fairly for effort and output they give for the money they make. I have no idea what your specific situation is, but the average salaries for all government workers are on average significantly HIGHER than their private workforce counterparts. USA Today (A left wing publication) published a study which is referenced in this (I think)right wing article:
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(NewsMax) - Buoyed by the efforts of reform-minded GOP governors in states like Wisconsin and New Jersey, free-market advocates are blasting the cushy pay packages of unionized public workers who in some states earn as much as $18,000 more than their private counterparts — with ironclad protections from being fired or laid off.

That outrage was stoked further Tuesday by a report showing that that public-sector employees in labor-battleground Wisconsin and 40 other states receive much higher total compensation than do people working in the private sector.

Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative organization airing radio and television ads supporting Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s bid to rein in union power there, tells Newsmax that unions and the politicians whose campaigns they finance have created “a privileged class in many respects.”

“Twenty years ago, the deal was, ‘Hey, in the public sector, you may get maybe a little bit less salary, but we’re going to take care of you on the pension-benefit side very generously, and you’ll get job security,’” Phillips tells Newsmax.

“These days, over the last 10 or 12 years, they get job security, pay, and pensions and benefits. They get all three, and it’s driven their salaries far beyond what the private sector gets.”

Walker is scheduled to unveil a major budget proposal at 4 p.m. Eastern time today. Republicans are bracing for a Democratic and media backlash, because Walker’s budget takes steps to close a $3.6 billion deficit.

Walker had hoped that his “budget-repair bill” would be enacted before the budget roll-out, so that state and local officials would have flexible tools at their disposal to minimize layoffs. But Wisconsin Democratic senators fled to Illinois to block an effort to vote on the legislation.

Union leaders say they’re willing to make concessions in order to preserve their collective-bargaining privilege. Walker’s proposals would limit public-worker negotiations to base salary, but pension benefits and health insurance contributions would be excluded.

The USAToday analysis published Tuesday, which is based on Bureau of Economic Analysis data, shows that public-employees in Wisconsin earn about $2,000 more in salary and benefits than their private-sector counterparts.

The largest pay gap in the 50 states occurs in Nevada, where government workers earn nearly $18,000 more a year than private-sector employees. The biggest increase is in cash-strapped California, where public-employee compensation soared a whopping 28 percent above the rate of inflation from 2000 to 2009.

Other major state disparities underwritten by taxpayers: Rhode Island (public workers earn an average of $69,284, which is $17,603 more than the private-sector average); Vermont (average salary of $51,503, and $5,811 more than the private sector); Hawaii ($59,595, or $12,243 more than the private sector); Florida ($58,749, which is $9,099 more than the private sector; South Carolina ($52,591, a difference of $7,590); and Michigan ($58,801, a pay gap compared with the private sector of $6,436).

American Enterprise Institute scholar Andrew G. Biggs has written that the actual disparity is much greater, however, because Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that a public-sector worker only has about a 6 percent chance of losing their job in any given year.

That contrasts to a private-sector job loss rate of 20 percent per annum. So the cost of finding new employment is much higher for private sector workers, on a per-capita basis.

On Monday, President Barack Obama warned the nation’s governors not to “vilify” or “denigrate” public-union workers — a remark that drew tough retorts from Walker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

And Phillips says, “This isn’t about denigrating anyone, it’s not about harming anyone. It’s about trying to protect the fiscal sanity and the economic prosperity of our nation and our states. And it is about fairness.

“Taxpayers in the private sector should not have to pay for benefits and wages that are way beyond what they get in the private sector,” says Phillips, whose organization is planning a series of bus excursions into the districts of Wisconsin Democratic senators who fled the state rather than vote on Walker’s budget reform bill. “So that’s why I think you’re seeing this push for change.”

Manhattan Institute senior fellow and author Steven Malanga tells Newsmax that the wages given to public-sector employees in recent years often are higher than the marketplace requires in order to attract competent employees.

For example, he maintains there are 72 applicants for every job opening in the New York City Sanitation Department.

“Walker’s recognition is that public employees are already well compensated, and we have to slow the growth if we are to achieve balance in the long term in this new fiscal reality,” Malanga tells Newsmax. “And the way to do that is to have the same flexibility in Wisconsin government that the federal government has — because the president doesn’t operate under collective bargaining rules in the federal government — and the same flexibility that CEOs have.”

Union leaders maintain that Republicans are trying to exploit the fiscal crises many states face in order to hurt the unions, which provide massive contributions to the coffers of Democratic candidates. But Republicans and some conservative economists say unbridled public-sector unions create an inherent conflict of interest that works to the taxpayers’ detriment.

“The reason collective bargaining does not work in the public sector is because, as the unions themselves admit, they have the opportunity to elect their own bosses . . . in the public sector, increasingly, you have people sitting on the same side of the table,” Malanga says.

Malanga adds that public-sector unions are the No. 1 sources of funds advocating for higher taxes around the country. Those taxes are used to defray the higher cost of the public-sector salaries revealed in the USAToday analysis.

“It’s worse that it even seems,” Malanga says, “when you just look at salary increases over the past decade . . . New Jersey hasn’t made adequate contributions to cover its pension obligations in 17 straight years. Illinois has not collected enough tax revenue to finance all of its bills, including its pensions, in more than a decade. We’re just not paying for that stuff.”

Phillips adds that much of the increased compensation comes in pensions and other benefits, because these are not as immediately obvious to the public.

“That’s why you see this explosion over the last decade or decade and a half,” he said. “The bill comes due later, right? . . . It’s hard to spot for the public, and the bill often comes due years down the road when you’re out of office and your political career is over.”

Tuesday, 01 Mar 2011 02:03 PM By David A. Patten Source: www.newsmax.com/Headline/wisconsin-public-unions-earnings/2011/03/01/id/387909
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Now, the double average pay number is ALL public union and non union workers compared to the Wisconsin Teachers Union members which was the argument that was raging at the time I read the article. My apologies that I misapplied the figures to all union government workers. A pulitzer prize winning watchdog (who is based in Florida and is left wing) had to admit that the claim of nearly double pay and quadruple benefits was true, though they said "barely true" which is quite an admission for an entity set out to tear the argument apart. I didn't know something could be "barely" true. That sounds like TRUE to me, not FALSE. But I wanted a left wing respected source to give their best shot at the claim and see where it falls:

Here's a link to their analysis of the specific claim: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...s-news-eric-bolling-says-wisconsin-teac/

I found tons of articles with wide ranging opinions and statistics and lots of manipulations. I liked the above article because it was the rights claim and then verified by a respected watch dog group on the left. That seemed fair to me.

I have no idea how you know how much someone would be making had they worked the same hours, same number of days, done the same quantity of work under the same conditions. As I understand it, Private workers in same jobs as union workers work more hours per week, more days per year with less paid days off. They also have to pay far more for their benefits which are far less valuable than the government unions. So it seems difficult to compare apples to apples with your career and someone in the private sector. But it seems quite odd that states would be wanting to get rid of less expensive employees? The claims in the articles are that initially people started making less with the promise of having a great retirement as you suggested, but over they years their pay and other benefits grew and grew until they were superior across the board. Perhaps that doesn't apply to you. I don't expect you to share any info on your earnings and benefits so it's impossible to really research it.

I do know it seems odd that they'd want to get rid of cheaper labor? In most cases they haven't cut benefits as much as ask for an increase in paying for the benefits which in Wisconsin wasn't much at all and was much better than even other unions as well as private sector. If there isn't a huge and unreasonable amount of benefits coming to you, then it seems unlikely they'd bother to come after them since it would be hard to make the case for doing so.

Your comment about people making tons more money and risking it all on the stock market and losing it and having sour grapes rings hollow to me. The market is bouncing back and over long term private 401K's rarely lose money. Unless Obama crashes our entire system (he sure seems to be trying) things should be okay long term. We invest in the market and I personally use the money I have made to supplement JPF costs rather than saving it for retirement that may well never come for me. JPF itself would be my retirement plan if it has value at that time. The difference between you and me is that I risked my own money and if I fail or succeed either way, I am not taking your tax dollars. You gambled with a corrupt union and corrupt politicians who lied to you and promised things 25 years ago they knew they wouldn't be around to have to deliver on. It was a scam just like Wall Street scammed people. You chose to take the risk of high reward payoff at the end just like I am. We may both fail or both succeed. If the union goes bust along with the state of Florida, sue your union for their part in the fraud. The dollars are unsustainable. State after state will have to take the same action, whether they are right like in Wisconsin, or left like in MA. Reality is unavoidable. It was a bit of a ponzi scheme. I doubt you'll get totally screwed, but perhaps like the rest of the population, you guys in the union will feel the same pain everyone else is.

Not all workers of any kind are lazy. But every company or union has lazy workers. In a non union company, they are fired. In the union, they are protected and we taxpayers are forced to keep paying them. We're the boss supposedly, but we can't get rid of bad performers? Horrible teachers can't be fired because of the unions. Kids suffer as do tax payers. No company hire 100% hard working people. If unions allowed bad performers to be fired like everyone else, you'd find far less opposition. Why should they have a guaranteed job? Also, why should anyone be forced to join a union to get a job? Why shouldn't they be allowed to negotiate their own conditions and salaries and benefits? If the unions are so great, people will still join. But it won't force people to pay the salaries of political lobbyists and campaign money to people they despise. That seems fair as well. Plus, Government unions are by nature corrupt. They hire their own bosses and then get whatever they want because they bought and paid for the politicians with campaign contributions. The government is a monopoly and doesn't have to compete in the open market and thus can make unrealistic deals and answer to no one because the politicians are kept in power by the unions so often.

Now we have the government stopping Boeing from opening a plant in South Carolina because they don't have a union there. How is that legal let alone fair to all those folks who will lose those jobs? Obviously without a union to deal with they can still get plenty of quality employees, so why should people be FORCED to join a union they don't want? And why is the government choosing sides? Oh that's right, because they helped Obama win last time and he wants to raise a Billion dollars this time so he can buy another election.

If I have to choose between bring down a whole state or making unions restructure to be more like the private sector even a little bit, I think it's obvious what has to be done. If the state goes down, you lose it all. What choice exactly do they have?

Brian