If you listen to Scott Walker or his Republican friends, you’d think that rank and file state employees are entirely to blame for the state’s budget mess.
Never mind that the most recent round of employee contracts that failed had significant concessions — steeper concessions than contracts under Republicans, according to one assembly member — $100 million worth of cuts that include higher health care costs for workers and 16 unpaid furlough days.
But actions speak louder than words. So the next time Scott Walker tries to blame state employees for the budget mess, consider that it has taken him much longer than Governor Doyle to announce his cabinet appointments.
And why would that be? According to WisPolitics, Walker’s top picks are hesitating because they know moving from the private sector to the state means a pay cut.
Insiders continue to question what’s taking so long and speculate Walker is having trouble finding the people he wants, in part, because some in the private sector are hesitant to leave their lucrative posts for the grind of an administration job in tough budget times supervising a workforce with increasingly poor morale.
Just remember that the next time you hear Scott Walker or Mike Huebsch bloviate about AFSCME or state worker pay.
The other reason is that they actually have to be accountable for their record if they take a cabinet or administration position. It’s much better to get some flunky or fake-named lobbying organization to do your dirty work for you, and most people aren’t able to draw the line back to you…and even if they eventually do recognize your corruption, you get a helluva payday out of it ahead of time.
What do you think this whole “make all rules go through the guv” idea is? It’s to pay back Scotty’s buddies without having to do it in public, and have people find out what you’re really planning to do. Straight out of the George W. Bush School of Public Management. Right-wingers really hate those “taxpayer accountability” and “dealing with consequences of actions” things that unelected bureaucrats do.
I wonder if Scott Walker will demand that his department heads and upper level administrators take a big pay cut, given that most of those folks make six figures a year in their cushy jobs. After all, if Walker’s serious about cutting the state’s budget deficit, he should start where there’s the most fat to be cut.
Great post, great comments.
I don’t know if it’s quite that comparable. If you are asking a private-sector CEO to come run a state agency, you have to expect it would be a sacrifice. If you are asking your average AFSCME worker to make $60k in the public sector (primo benefits) vs. $40k in the private sector (average benefits), it’s not a tough choice.
Or to rephrase your question in the reverse, if things are so rough for AFSCME workers in the public sector, why aren’t they lured away by those better-paying jobs in the private sector?
If you want to side with the C-suite over the average worker, that’s your business of course, but if you think the average state represented worker is making 50 percent more than her private sector counterparts, you might want to consider coming down out of that tower sometime:
From 2000 to 2008, the wages of state employees was 6.2 percent less than for private-sector employees.
one thing that never gets addressed is: Because we allow companies to outsource their jobs and lay off tens of thousands of Americans, does not mean then that states need to lay off public workers in the same percentages. The state worker/private worker ratio speaks much more to the failed trade policies of reaganomics than it does an expansive government.
Somthing rediculus about this is, my mom has worked in the State Janitorial staff for over 20 years, im not completely sure but i do know she makes less than 30k per year, deffinatly, she is a single mother, i am her only child and now shes scared to death scott walkers gona cut her income and remove her pension, Not cool.