Question of the week: “Do you believe voter approval of public employee pension reform in San Jose and San Diego is the beginning of a nationwide trend?”
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Karen Anderson: “It could be, though I have no idea how widespread the problem is. In the past 20 years, politicians here have increased the percent while decreasing the age for full pension, even in cities with no big union issues or candidate funding. In many cases, the increases were city/county manager driven.”
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Dave Appling: “I doubt it. These landslide voter demonstrations are a wake-up call. Intransigent union leaders need to read the tea leaves and bring realism, proportion and mutual interest back to the bargaining table. The gravy train doesn’t stop at Easy Street any more.”
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Bert Berson: “Yes. I am on the one hand against removal of collective bargaining rights and on the other hand realize that future benefits must be reduced. Although there is a lot of cheering going on in San Jose I don’t believe that Measure B will stand up. I believe that in the end the city will have to negotiate with the unions.”
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Chris Bryant: “Yes, unfortunately unions have made it impossible for elected officials to change benefits and the pension boards, controlled by the unions they benefit, legally have the duty to ignore taxpayer interests.”
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David Cohen: “No.”
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Dennis Kennedy: “Yes! Collective bargaining should remain, but unions need to be realistic in their requests if they want to survive. Workers in the private sector have made huge sacrifices, losing their jobs, their incomes and their homes. Resolution of the impacts of the ‘Great Recession’ needs to be fair for all of us.”
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Julian Mancias: “Yes. And it is long overdue.”
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Henry Miller: “Yes. And it’s about time. Who decided that librarians et. al. should be able to retire after 20 years with six-figure retirement benefits? Let’s start at the top – or is it the bottom? – and get the proposed 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed so all government officials play by the same rules we do – Social Security, Medicare, etc.
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Jeff Nunes: “Hopefully, yes. If our municipalities and states want to survive and escape bankruptcy, it had better be.”
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Lisa Pampuch: “Yes. While I believe that efforts to end public employee unions’ collective bargaining rights are an unjustified overreach, it’s clear (and understandable) that most taxpayers do not want to pay for public employees to have retirement pensions and benefits that are far more generous than those that are available in the private sector.”
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Jeff Smith: “Yes. I think people are starting to wake up and realize the unsustainability of the situation. Public employee unions should be illegal. It is absolutely ludicrous for these unions to continually ‘bargain’ for increased pay, benefits, pensions, etc, that the taxpayers must fund, while the taxpayers have no say in the matter. It is not right, and it must change if we want to avoid being the next Greece.”
