By Mike Scinto
Columnist
Appearing in the Kettering-Oakwood Times-Times Community Newspapers
In college football and basketball, Wisconsin and Ohio have been thorns in each other’s sides over the years. But right now, we are on the same page when it comes to one aspect of balancing the states’ respective budgets; the elimination of collective bargaining for state employees by incoming budget-conscious governors and legislators. It’s a step long overdue as far as I’m concerned.
Now before you start typing your letters to the editor, or firing off a nasty email to me let me say this; it’s spelled S-C-I-N-T-O. And yes, I believe today, in 2011, a union mentality in the private sector and the public sector is equally bad. Yes, I am a union-buster and proud of it!
You see, public employees are protected from the realities of what the rest of us face in the “real world”. If a car maker announces its employee costs (including wages and benefits) are out of line with revenue, it can simply take its manufacturing business off-shore (as they have), or shut its doors completely and end that problem for good. Government simply can’t be shut down or move offshore. But the cost overruns, increasing price tags of health care, wages and benefits are still a reality.
Let’s look briefly at the private sector. I remember thirty years ago the warnings from companies like General Motors, Chrysler, NCR, Dayton Press and others that union demands, if met, would eventually cost union members their jobs. The unions bare most of the blame, but employers and lawmakers were also at fault for buckling to this legal blackmail and continuing to allow the union bosses to line their respective pockets as they robbed from their employees who were making artificially high (and out of whack) wages and benefits. Then the bubble burst.
I knew an autoworker personally who, for more than a decade, was laid off over half of those ten years yet, through unemployment and TRA (Trade Readjustment Allowance) funds ended up taking in 90% of what his colleagues were making on the line. But I digress with my private sector chatter.
I also remember when public employees could not strike, or would be fired. I stood, not long after leaving the Air Force, watching firefighters stand and watch houses burn down over labor disputes. That’s one of the reasons I decided to become a talk show host.
I was so proud when President Ronald Reagan stood up to PATCO (the air traffic controllers) and told them to get back to work or be fired. And they were canned! That took intestinal fortitude on Reagan’s part, but he stood firm.
Unlike Ford and General Motors taking their operations to Mexico or China, your neighborhood policeman and firefighter is here to stay. If the private company is running in the red, it can simply downsize, move overseas or shut down. We (taxpayers) are the employers of public workers. If “our” employees need to take a pay cut, staff members need to be eliminated, or bad employees need to be weeded out (like bad teachers) it would violate collective bargaining contracts. It gives the unions representing workers all the power with none of the responsibilities.
It’s time to face the reality of this economy and our changing economy. We, as a state, need to take back control of who we hire, how much they make and the kinds of benefits we can really afford to pay out; and be able to adjust those numbers as needed. I respect our hard-working, dedicated public employees. I’m not saying that they (as a whole) are not qualified, hard workers or essential, but so is a balanced budget and working within the constraints of that budget.
The gravy train is pulling into the station in Wisconsin and Ohio. If employees want to keep their jobs in the public sector they may need to shed some of their excesses so the train can pull back out of the station and continue its trek. If not, there’s a whole new batch of well-groomed replacements ready to move in and accept the boundaries of our “new’ reality”. The choice is yours public employees, just as the rest of us have had to make those choices out here in the private sector. To “borrow” a line from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, “Choose wisely”!
