| Note: a version of this post originally appeared at the close of our review of Florida Political News for 2/10/08. The swells on the Orlando Sentinel editorial board think Florida governments' financial problems can largely be traced to the "fatter paychecks of government workers". These dopes, in a delightfully titled editorial this morning - Fattening Up: Local and state governments are overly generous to employees - have the gall to complain that public employees are compensated too well. They make three (3) laughable, indeed embarrassing points, which we address in detail below. As their first argument, the editors hit us with their best punch: the wages of city and county workers in Florida [which were already pathetically out of sync with the private sector] grew by more than 20 percent between 2001 and 2006, and the average salaries of all local government workers is now higher than those who work for businesses. The editors find it outrageous thatthe average pay for city and county workers in Florida in 2006 was nearly $41,000 compared to about $38,000 for businesses. ... Wow. So much for the struggling public employee*. Of course, the figures used by the editors for "comparison" include the minimum wages and miserly benefits received by "service workers" who dominate Florida's private sector economy, as well as the wages (and in most cases the complete absence of benefits) of part-time and temporary workers. Ironically, these lower private sector wages also include the unskilled and semi-skilled jobs formerly performed by government workers, which have in recent years been subcontracted out to private companies paying even lower wages and providing fewer (if any) benefits than the public sector.  Overpaid SWAT Team member, whose salary exceeds the average of "those who work for businesses", prepares to rescue taxpayer held hostage  Faux "struggling public employee" carries taxpayer's child to safety  Selfish Tactical team officers, with "platinum benefit packages", prepare to assault meth lab operation in taxpayers' neighborhood  Forest firefighter "fattening up" on "overly generous" benefits as she prepares to enter inferno in state forest enjoyed by taxpayers The editors third "argument" is that public employers have not gutted health insurance benefits: they write that "while businesses cut back on health-insurance benefits ... few governments have done the same." You read that right, the editors actually argue that health-insurance benefits should be "cut back". The reason that, because the private sector - in the absence of a strong union movement - has been able to shift most if not all health care costs to employees (after all, there is no law requiring employers to provide health insurance at all), government should do the same. Taking this "argument" to its logical conclusion, why not eliminate public employee employee health insurance in its entirety - it would be cheaper for the taxpayer, at least in the (very) short run. The bottom line is that the Sentinel editors believe that the public sector - which, unlike most of the private sector, actually treats its employees with a modicum of decency - is a drag on the private sector's ability (including the Sentinel in its capacity of an employer) to unrestrainedly exploit employees for the sake of making a buck. We know and accept that corporate America is an amoral machine that cares nothing about anything else but profit, but one would hope that our society - acting through its elective representatives - would care about something greater than joining Florida's private sector in its race to the bottom. The Sentinel editorial board does not share that hope. - - - - - - - - - - * Could these be the same faux "struggling public employees" the Sentinel acknowledged a couple of weeks ago could not afford to buy a home in Orange County? "A study by the county's 2006 task force showed that most homes were far out of the price range of 75 percent of all Orange County residents. ... The market leaves ... police, firefighters and other workers with few options." ** The Tribune Company's new owner is a "real estate mogul [sic]", with a wide wingnut streak: "the mention of Hillary Clinton’s name prompted him to use a four-letter obscenity to describe her." *** The Sentinel's anti-union glee is no secret: see e.g., "Ignorance", "Sentinel At It Again" and "Oh ... The Horror". **** During a strike involving a Tribune Company newspaper [the Baltimore Sun] a few years back, "guess where Tribune's finding its [reporter and editor] scabs? 'Florida is supplying them with a lot,' says one Sentinel source". Indeed, "potential scabs are offered Sun pay on top of their normal salary -- more than double their pay, for scabs coming from regional papers like the Sentinel -- plus per-diem expenses and even security to deal with the hecklers." "Send in the scabs". By the way, we all can agree on what a scab is, can't we? No less a figure than Jack London, described as "the most successful writer in America in the early 20th Century" - and presumably someone for whom the Sentinel writers have some respect - is attributed with putting it this way, as described by the U.S. Supreme Court: The Scab "After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab." "A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles." "When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and Angels weep in Heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out." "No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with. Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his Master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab has not." "Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commission in the British Army. The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife, his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled promise from his employer." "Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country; a SCAB is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class." See also this Jack London paper in "the Atlantic's series of papers on the Ethics of Business." ***** The Orlando Sentinel has editorialized long and hard against newspapers being subject to lawsuits for so-called "false light" torts, while at the very same time the Sentinel's lawyers were threatening another newspaper with, you guessed it, a "false light" lawsuit. "Oh ... The Hypocrisy". |
