Column: Should Public Workers Have to Pay More?
The state's fiscal mess is mostly not their fault.
Over the last few weeks, the battle over New Jersey public employee pensions and health benefits has been fierce. Last week, the workers wound up the losers. The issues often are portrayed as simple ones—the unions are bullies who strong-armed state or local employers to get cushy perks for their members, or the governor and Legislature are the bullies stealing hard won benefits and collective bargaining rights from poor workers. It’s actually much more complicated than that. Way back 20 or 30 years ago, there was pretty much no doubt that New Jersey’s public workers on a whole were low-paid compared with people in the private sector. If you went to work in a public job, it was for the benefits, particularly for a good pension. Then came …
In this Article:
Roll Back Our Tax
7:29 pm on Friday, December 30, 2011
Glad 2011 will be over soon. Will 2012 be any better? Probably not. A look at things to come with Greece leading the way. See what happens when austerity plans have to be implemented because a country is too deep in debt to pay their public employees and they take it out on the private sector workers still employed. . http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8786547/The-Greek-tragedy-no… more ›