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Jewish World Review July 12, 2010 / 1 Menachem-Av, 5770 $33-an-hour--For Sleeping On the Job By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Last week the NY Post ran a story about two late-shift, unionized public employees sleeping on the job. According to the Post, "(S)leeping workers are a familiar nighttime sight along the streets of NoHo and SoHo around the Angelika theater, which is next to the transit crew entrance." And what do these arrogant deadbeats get paid for shirking their responsibilities? $33-an-hour.
I'd like to tell you that this story is a new development — but it's not. Two years ago a supervisor and a mechanic were caught sleeping in a locked office at the same facility by the Metropolitan Transit Authority's Inspector General's Office, which conducted a surprise raid. The same supervisor was discovered to have been moonlighting as an electrician for 20 years — and ordering a subordinate to falsify his hours. A clear-cut firing offense? The MTA reportedly tried, but union work rules required an arbitration process.
The man received a 30-day suspension as his "punishment."
Outrageous? Here's the most damnable part of the story: when the NY Post looked in workers' cars parked near the facility, "several" of them "had pillows and blankets on the back seats."
It is stating the obvious to say that such behavior is utterly corrupt, but even then, a question must be asked: how does a human being rationalize such despicable behavior in his own mind?
Only one "logical" answer comes to mind: unchecked corruption leads to unchecked self-entitlement.
Once again, I'd like to say this is a local problem, but it's not. Public service employee unions suffused with the same sense of self-entitlement, are crushing state and local governments around the country. Early retirement, often at fifty years of age, coupled with lifetime pensions and health care benefits, are blowing budgetary holes so big, that bankruptcy may end up being the only viable option for hundreds of municipalities.
Here's hoping it happens, because abrogating union contracts couldn't happen to a "nicer" group — of cutthroats.
That's right, I said cutthroats. Only people suffused with a level of self-entitlement that is completely absurd could demand that their concerns be completely divorced from fiscal reality. The public service unions' mantra can be reduced to one phrase, as in "you can get blood from a stone." And their prevailing attitude is now quite familiar to most Americans:
Screw everyone else, give me mine.
Only a cutthroat — one whose average pay and benefits is almost double that of his private sector counterparts — would expect those making substantially less than he is to underwrite even more largesse for himself. And such is only possible when cowardly politicians cave to one unrealistic union demand after another, even when they know they're running their city/county/state into the ground.
Is their a stronger "marriage" in the world than union thugs and whore politicians?
And spare me the sob stories. We are long past the days of sweat shops, child labor and Woodie Guthrie songs. What started as a legitimate movement to protect the rights of workers has become a Frankenstein monster of over-paid, do-as-little-work-as-possible, self-entitled hacks, demanding more and more, while their fellow Americans live with less and less.
Hacks who aren't even fired for sleeping on the job. Hacks who consider it an affront to their dignity to accept a job freeze or even a modest contribution to their health and retirement costs, despite a severe recession which has put eight million of their fellow Americans out of work in the private sector — even as the public sector has been adding jobs.
Or are we their "fellow Americans?" Never before has there been a greater disconnect within the American middle class than there is right now. Public service employees have generated a level of contempt so pervasive, many Americans consider them enemies. And if one defines an enemy as someone who would do harm to you and yours, such a sentiment is understandable. How many Americans would kill to make $33-an-hour, retire in their fifties, and get lifetime health benefits — along with pensions bloated up by working overtime hours in the last few years of employment? How many of those same Americans would never dream of sleeping on a job like that?
The job itself? Maintaining subway hydraulic pumps — which keep the system from being flooded by underground springs and rivers. Is there a scintilla of doubt in your mind that not a single one of these bums would be held accountable if a trainload of passengers drowned as a direct result of their malfeasance?
A recent interview on Fox regarding the subject infuriated me. For those in a coma, public service unions and the Democrat party are, for all intents and purposes, one and the same entity. How closely tied are they? According to opensecrets.com, between 1989 and 2010, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) gave ninety-eight percent of their campaign contributions to Democrats.
The National Education Association (NEA)? Ninety percent. The Service Employees International Union (SIEU)? Ninety four percent. Teamsters? Ninety seven percent.
The top of the heap? The United Auto Workers, who gave ninety-nine percent of their money to Democrats.
And what did they get in return? Bankruptcy laws flagrantly tossed aside by the Obama administration: private sector, first creditors were made subservient to union secondary creditors, and the American taxpayer was forced to bailout GM and Chrysler — or as one pundit accurately put it, Americans making twenty bucks-an-hour bailed out people making seventy.
This is one American who would ride a bike before I would buy a car from either of these contemptible companies.
Back to the interview. In typically predictable style, the Democrat union shill asked the Fox News interviewer whether he would be willing to "balance state budgets on the back of cops and firemen." In typically predictable style, the ostensibly conservative interviewer buckled. "Of course not," he answered.
Wrong answer, milquetoast. You bet your butt we should balance state budgets on the backs of cops and firemen — and teachers, janitors, trash collectors, transit workers and the millions of other public sector employees who are primarily responsible for the fiscal nightmares most states are facing. What in the world makes them exempt? Cheap, class-warfare rhetoric?
Nice try, but it's not flying anymore. Not when millions of Americans are struggling to stay afloat, while their union counterparts prosper.
Not when those same unions are holding entire states hostage to their outrageous demands. Not when vital services are being cut to fund retirees.
By the way, why is it always "vital services" that are either cut or threatened to be cut? Americans are wising up to that scam as well. They know it's nothing more than a scare tactic designed to make them more "compliant" regarding union demands.
We are at yet another crossroad, my fellow Americans. We either re-trace a path towards fiscal sanity and personal responsibility, or we continue the journey towards national insolvency paved by those Americans more than willing to run the country into the ground as long a "they get theirs" in the interim. And make no mistake: interim is the upside on this path. There is absolutely no long-term sustainability when the takers outnumber the givers.
Finally, the names of the sleeping workers are Frank Ryan and Robert Malandrino. The names of the double-dipping supervisor and his fellow Rip-Van-Winkle mechanic are Edward Billitteri and Freddie Wright, respectively. It is my contention the people of New York should know their names.
Taxpayers deserve to know who they're paying to sleep on the job.
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© 2010, Arnold Ahlert |
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