OT: Public Employee Unions Attack the City of San Diego/Prop B

[CA renter]

And do these customers get their money from govt sales or services? Or their customers? I’m willing to bet that somewhere down the line, the taxpayer is the one footing the bill.

[Vod-Vil]

“Just so everybody understands, the “anti-union” propaganda is not being pushed by taxpayer advocates, and nothing that’s being proposed would result in lower taxes for taxpayer Joe Sixpack.”

Why do the unions support sales tax increases that directly impact the poor?

Joe Sixpack proposes that the unions should stop putting sales tax increases on the ballot.If the unions want respect,let them go after the “Privatization Movement”,and quit jacking up taxes on the poor.

[CA renter]

[quote=Vod-Vil]”Just so everybody understands, the “anti-union” propaganda is not being pushed by taxpayer advocates, and nothing that’s being proposed would result in lower taxes for taxpayer Joe Sixpack.”

Why do the unions support sales tax increases that directly impact the poor?

Joe Sixpack proposes that the unions should stop putting sales tax increases on the ballot.If the unions want respect,let them go after the “Privatization Movement”,and quit jacking up taxes on the poor.[/quote]

Most union members do NOT want higher sales taxes, but they are left with no options because larger and more powerful interests are doing everything in their power to protect the interests of the very wealthy — challenging any moves to increase income, property, or other taxes that are less regressive.

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Service Employees International Union Local 721’s political education committee recommended unanimously Thursday night that the group take a position against the tax, which is backed by City Council President Herb Wesson for the March 5 ballot. The council’s final vote on that tax is slated for next week.

L.A. leaders frequently rely on unions to deliver financial support for city and county tax measures. Charley Mims, a member of SEIU 721’s Committee on Political Education, said it was “pretty obvious” the proposal [to increase the sales tax] was generated by Wesson after closed-door talks with the real estate industry, which steered city leaders away from a tax on property transactions and toward one on general sales in the final days of deliberations.

“We’re concerned that this was just sprung on us overnight from the backroom and we don’t really have the details,” he said. “And we’re concerned about it being a regressive tax that’s really going to be affecting poor and middle-class people more than anybody else — and those are our members.”

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/17/local/la-me-city-sales-tax-20121117

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Note: the vast majority of the support for the sales tax came from the private sector, specifically real estate/development…where the vast majority of the fraud, waste, and abuse in local govt occurs.

…

The push for a sales tax increase is being led by City Council President Herb Wesson, who has helped raise more than $1.2 million for the pro-Proposition A campaign. More than one out of every four dollars has come from labor unions, most of them representing city employees. Service Employees International Union, which represents civilian city employees, has given $100,000. Its members at City Hall received a 3.75% pay increase last summer and are in line for another 1.75% raise in July and a 5.5% pay hike on Jan. 1, 2014.

As of Friday afternoon, real estate interests and billboard companies had provided one-third of the money collected in support of Proposition A, according to Ethics Commission records. Several donors are waiting for the City Council to approve their projects or have already received permission to use tax revenue to finance their projects.

The single biggest donor has been NFL stadium developer Anschutz Entertainment Group, which has received a series of lucrative deals with City Hall over the last decade. The company was given the right to keep up to $270 million in tax revenue generated by its hotels at the LA Live entertainment complex over 25 years.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/02/local/la-me-poll-tax-increase-20130302

…

So, unions provided only about 25% of the funding for the sales tax proposition; the vast majority of the funding came from the PRIVATE SECTOR.

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In Washington:

The Washington Education Association is withholding support from Gov. Chris Gregoire’s proposed half-cent increase in the sales tax to help schools and health care programs. Instead its leaders want lawmakers to look for other tax options that don’t hit the low-income taxpayer so hard.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/12/01/1927819/schools-group-wont-support-sales.html#storylink=cpy

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Believe me, very few union members think that sales taxes should be raised.

[livinincali]

[quote=CA renter]
Most union members do NOT want higher sales taxes, but they are left with no options because larger and more powerful interests are doing everything in their power to protect the interests of the very wealthy — challenging any moves to increase income, property, or other taxes that are less regressive.
[/quote]

Really. Then why did SEIU contribute over 10 million to proposition 30. Why did CA teacher union contribute over 11 million to propsition 30 that included a sales tax increase.

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_30,_Sales_and_Income_Tax_Increase_(2012)

Public sector union will do what’s good for them. They might prefer to take the tax money from the rich and give it to themselves. Pretty much everybody is fine with taxing somebody else to get a beneficial service.

[paramount]

As bad as San Diego is with the public employee unions and gov’t workers, it’s 10 times worse in LA.

It’s just sickening.

Here’s a factual example from the press:

“Union government workers have bankrupt the city. So many Government “workers” were watching the Olympics all day at city hall last summer that the computers crashed, and were sent a memo not reprimanding them but encouraging them to watch in large groups.”

Los Angeles would be better off going bankrupt, and breaking the stranglehold the govt “worker” unions have on the tax payers of LA.

It’s awful, it really is…

[SK in CV]

[quote=paramount]As bad as San Diego is with the public employee unions and gov’t workers, it’s 10 times worse in LA.

It’s just sickening.

Here’s a factual example from the press:

“Union government workers have bankrupt the city. So many Government “workers” were watching the Olympics all day at city hall last summer that the computers crashed, and were sent a memo not reprimanding them but encouraging them to watch in large groups.”

Los Angeles would be better off going bankrupt, and breaking the stranglehold the govt “worker” unions have on the tax payers of LA.

It’s awful, it really is…[/quote]

How can it be factual when the very first sentence is false? “bankrupt” has a very specific meaning. Los Angeles may be bankrupt at some time in the future. Today, it is not.

[paramount]

[quote=SK in CV]

How can it be factual when the very first sentence is false? “bankrupt” has a very specific meaning. Los Angeles may be bankrupt at some time in the future. Today, it is not.[/quote]

That was a typo.

Govt workers are slackers for the most part.

[CA renter]

Your repeating that same old nonsense doesn’t make it true, paramount.

Carry on…

[paramount]

The USPS is broke for the same reason San Diego and LA are broke: Excessive total compensation for these govt workers.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=paramount]The USPS is broke for the same reason San Diego and LA are broke: Excessive total compensation for these govt workers.[/quote]

No, paramount. The USPS isn’t actually “broke.” They haven’t replaced those who have retired in recent years and got rid of stamp machines in many branch post offices because the public isn’t using their services as much as they once were.

I myself used to send and receive a ton of mail. Now I pay bills online and use couriers such as UPS and FedEx to send/receive because they are often cheaper and more efficient than US Mail.

Now, I don’t get to much more mail than the Pennysaver and a couple of small bills and misc rpts every month or every few months. I’m just another representative of Suzy Q Public.

Even law offices (traditionally among the biggest users of US Mail) who used to have to send voluminous snail mail of every shape and size and certified mail for proof of service every day now have fax service agreements, e-mail proof of service agreements, e-filing privileges with courts, fax and e-mail discovery privileges (with gov’t agencies) and automatic scanning machines for 500+ pg documents in order to be able to e-mail them instead of having to continually wrap and mail (expensive) 6-20 lb parcels, etc.

Technology and the proliferation of couriers available to everyone in recent years has stolen work from the USPS, never to be returned. However, the USPS will always have its place but its “market share” of what it does best will be permanently shrunken.

If you have ever taken any visual and hand-eye coordination speed tests to compete for USPS jobs, you would find out they aren’t easy to score high enough on to get hired. Only the very highest scorers get called for interviews and the majority of people taking these tests, even repeatedly, fail them.

The “shrinkage” of the role of the USPS has nothing to do with its past or current workers’ compensation.

[paramount]

[quote=bearishgurl]

The “shrinkage” of the role of the USPS has nothing to do with its past or current workers’ compensation.[/quote]

You couldn’t be more wrong, excessive govt worker compensation is the sole reason the USPS IS BROKE.

The only thing keeping the USPS propped up is Ben’s monopoly money.

A small part of the problem is the law pegging postal rates to the govt’s phony inflation index.

[CA renter]

[quote=paramount][quote=bearishgurl]

The “shrinkage” of the role of the USPS has nothing to do with its past or current workers’ compensation.[/quote]

You couldn’t be more wrong, excessive govt worker compensation is the sole reason the USPS IS BROKE.

The only thing keeping the USPS propped up is Ben’s monopoly money.

A small part of the problem is the law pegging postal rates to the govt’s phony inflation index.[/quote]

Here you go, paramount:

http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_0217profitability.pdf

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It’s a declining industry thanks to electronic communications.

[paramount]

[quote=CA renter]

It’s a declining industry thanks to electronic communications.[/quote]

From that page: 80% of their costs are labor related.

[CA renter]

It’s a **service** industry. Of course most of their costs are labor-related!

The reason they are struggling, though, is because their market share is declining as electronic communication grows.

[Parabolica]

The Post Office is required by legislation passed by Republicans in Congress to pre-fund health care cost for retirees over the next 75 years. The payments are $5.5 billion per year until 2016. This level of pre-funding is unknown in the public or private sectors. The Post Office also operates mostly over what it can make, relying mostly on postage, thanks to the Post Office Reorganization Act of 1971.

It is obvious that the Post Office is mainly the victim of unprecendented legislation specifically designed to bring around its demise.

[Author]

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