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Contradictions, don’t
you love it?
By Bob Rhoades
Thursday’s CNO was, as always, filled with good local and national
stories, opinions and local info. It also had some excellent
contradictions, and of course it involved the dreaded SB5 aka Issue
2.
The Dayton Business Journal always has good information. Today
they reported on the United Auto Workers signing a new contract.
What a deal those people got! A signing bonus of $5000 for hourly
workers for signing the contract was the first thing. Wow!
I don’t know of a teacher, firefighter or police officer who ever got a
$5000 a year raise, let alone a signing bonus.
Entry level workers will start at a higher rate and get profit
sharing. What a deal. It also said that even though GM had
pulled out of the Miami Valley taking with it, thousands of jobs we
were still an automotive area because of parts manufacturers. You
betcha!
Then there was another article about two of our local State
Representatives talking to the Dayton School Board about SB 5 aka Issue
2. It allowed how this is going to save so much money and without
it schools, cities, villages and other public entities are going down
the tubes.
Now let me translate part of this to you. If you take these
two articles and put them in a blender and set the blender to grind,
you not only get both stories, you also get what the end result of both
issues would be:
1. No public employees are going to buy new cars next year.
2. Even though we all as taxpayers helped bail out the auto industry,
they’re not going to do anything to bail us out, build new schools or
fund salaries for public employees. Areas that are fortunate
enough to still have an auto plant will for a while as long as they can
find someone to buy a car.
3. The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled four times that school funding in
Ohio is not constitutional and three administrations have chosen to
ignore that mandate. Apparently this one will follow suit.
The state of Ohio and even the City of Greenville has given signing
bonuses. Around here it’s been about $1000 per person. That
seems like a big deal until you think about it for a while.
Contracts are usually for three or four years. The signing bonus
is a one-time deal. If you sign a contract for four years, it
comes out to $250 per year. Beyond that, since it’s a one shot deal,
it’s not in the contractual pay raise, so it’s not part of the
negotiations the next time you’re at the table. So you are
actually negotiating for a raise to the raise you got prior to four
years ago. Now you are six years behind.
A lot of people think that SB 5/Issue 2 is the greatest thing since
sliced bread. It probably would be if it was addressing a
problem. SB 5 asks that all employees pay at least 15% of their
health insurance. Greenville’s municipal employees pay 20% now,
so since they set 15% as the standard, maybe our guys can go
backwards. It asks that all pay raises be merit raises. In
the city of Greenville all firefighters must take and pass a written
and practical test to get a raise. There are 7 steps to get to
top pay. So we’ll wait and see if we’re over doing it here and
maybe we can drop back to only 2 or three steps. It also asks
that all employees pay their own portion of their retirement.
Greenville employees always have and always probably will.
This whole thing came about because some political subdivision in Ohio
decided it would be good to offer its employees a package that included
the jurisdiction picking up the employees 10% of the retirement
contribution. This, in fact, was like giving them 10% more
spending money and with no actual pay raise, it was a pretty good deal
for the employers for a couple of years. Now the next time
negotiations started, the employees were standing there not having to
pay anything for their retirement and still had their hand out because
it’s four years later and the UAW just got a $5000 signing bonus.
Let me ask you this. How many of you think the union should have
accepted that package where ever it happened? How many of you
think the politicians looked down the road more than 2 years?
Greenville’s fire fighters were notified that two of their members were
going to be laid off because of budget cuts recently. They
immediately opened up the contract with the city and made significant
cuts, and FD administration did the same. They saved the two jobs
working together. Any complaints on how that worked?
I’ve asked 15 times where did all of these bad things happen that SB5
is based on, but have gotten no answers. I’m not sure any of the
politicians know or they’d be telling us. Since the beginning of
SB5, I’ve wondered who the administration will pick on after they’re
done with public employees. I think it will be railroad workers
because their pensions aren’t taxed. Got any ideas?
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