Friday, July 15, 2011

Public workers and their benefits

Check out this headline:

Is Cutting Benefits For Public Workers Actually Wage Theft? Reframing the Right's Attacks On Unions

The short answer is yes.

And here's why:

Discussions about benefits cuts do not label them as what they really are: Wage theft. Public employees pay contributions out of their salaries into pension funds. They earned that money, they have documentation to prove they earned it, and their employers took it from them as part of the terms of an employment agreement that included pension benefits at retirement. When that money is not made available at the time of retirement, it is not simply a betrayal of a "promise." It is an active renege on a contractual agreement, and it is an example of wage theft.


Also, people are, from the get-go, willing to to public servant jobs - jobs that pay less than comparable ones in the private sector - specifically because of the benefits packages that go along with those jobs. So that right there is another form of wage theft.
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