Revolution in America's Northeast

[Dreadnaught]

In just the past 24 hours-

1) New Jersey votes to roll back benefits and increase contributions for its parasitic unionized state workforce. Not as far as I would have liked, but a massive and bi-partisan legislative victory.

2) New York's governor indicates he will veto a bill bought by the teacher's union that would allow local school districts to allow school districts to borrow up to $1 billion to pay for teacher pensions. This would create a sort of massive, almost off-books local government debt crisis like the ones brewing in Spain and China.

3) Greedy Connecticut unions suicidally vote against modest concessions, instantly blowing a $1.6 billion hole in that state's budget. This is only revolutionary in that it hastens the reality.

4) NY legislators wake up and approve gay marriage. Finally something positive that will welcome more people to NY. And keep more of my gay friends sticking around.

5) It will probably be easier to get a taxi in NY for those who take them, thanks to a defeat of an entrenched political interest.

***

I leave the northeast for two weeks and reason seems to be breaking-out all over the place. I'm away for another two weeks, who knows what will happen now?

[GGT]

.....
I leave the northeast for two weeks and reason seems to be breaking-out all over the place. I'm away for another two weeks, who knows what will happen now?

You'll meet a great gal at the wedding reception who lives in South Carolina, and decide to give up NYC for love?

[Dreadnaught]

It is a right to work state afterall.

[GGT]

But it's below the Mason-Dixon line. That can be a pretty big difference for a Yank. So....you're friends with the groom and his bride is a southern belle.

[Hazir]

The taxi law means people will be able to take a taxi off the island ?

[Dreadnaught]

They've always been able to. But it's been de-facto impossible to get a taxi from off the island without calling for a car service. Now said car services will be allowed to roam the streets and pick people up legally.

[Loki]

Got to love government-created monopolies.

[Hazir]

Got to love government-created monopolies.

I say, come to Amsterdam once and take a taxi. You'll be be thanking God on your bare knees you don't have a deregulated taxi-market after that particular experience. Make sure you've got enough money with you.

[Loki]

I say, come to Amsterdam once and take a taxi. You'll be be thanking God on your bare knees you don't have a deregulated taxi-market after that particular experience. Make sure you've got enough money with you.

I fail to see why having more taxis would lead to me paying more.

[Hazir]

Let me tell you I also do not understand why prices went up as the number of taxis went up as well and the level of service dropped dramatically. But they sure as hell did, from high-ish to incredibly expensive.

[Flixy]

I thought taxi's still needed a certification? They seem fine in eindhoven, the (very) few times i've taken them. Even when I had a drunk, vomiting girl with me the taxi driver was nice.

[Hazir]

I thought taxi's still needed a certification? They seem fine in eindhoven, the (very) few times i've taken them. Even when I had a drunk, vomiting girl with me the taxi driver was nice.

They need registration, and everybody with a driver's license and a car can obtain it. The Amsterdam taxi jungle is not what you'll find in other places, we've deregulated it. And who'd have thought that Mad Max was our destiny when we did.

[Dreadnaught]

Is it that insane? I hadn't heard that before.

[Hazir]

Not 200 meters from where I am writing this a man was kicked to death by a taxi-driver.

[Loki]

Need regulation to deal with that.

[Hazir]

Need regulation to deal with that.

Actually, yes. These fights occur because there are no set rules. At the taxi-stand in question there is a line, but also the legal right to pick any taxi in the line. Those contradictory conditions with zero-education zero-qualification taxi-drivers leads to fights between taxi-drivers and customers. The situation got so out of hand at both the taxi-stand near my home as the one next to the Central Station that at one point 24/7 police oversight was necessary.

[Dreadnaught]

NY governor is negotiating a package of cuts with the various state employee unions. The largest agreed to the new deal. The membership of the second largest voted it down. Impressively, the governor is actually moving to lay them off.

This is revolutionary. Also note the funny way described below in which people are "laid-off" by seniority.

NY POLITICS | SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

Layoff Notices Sent to 3,500 State Workers
By JACOB GERSHMAN

Unmoved by pleas from union officials, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday pushed ahead with plans to lay off 3,500 state workers, sending notices to workers throughout the state's government bureaucracy.

The governor's ax landed hardest on mental-health and corrections employees, but the impact was spread widely among 44 agencies employing workers from the Public Employees Federation, the state's second-largest union. Its members rejected on Tuesday a five-year contract that included wage freezes.

Mr. Cuomo's office on Wednesday issued a list showing a breakdown of the 3,496 layoffs by agency.

"All 3,500 started to go out today," said Josh Vlasto, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo. The notices were sent to workers by email and regular mail, he said.

Ken Brynien, PEF's president, called Mr. Cuomo's office several times to try to persuade the governor to suspend layoffs and resume talks, said a PEF spokeswoman.

"They're playing phone tag. He has not been able to have the conversation that he needs to have," said the PEF spokeswoman, Darcy Wells.

Aides to Mr. Cuomo, who said he needs to lay off workers to plug an $80 million hole in the state's budget, have said he won't renegotiate the bill and have called for a new vote.

About 54% of PEF's membership voted against the contract Mr. Cuomo hashed out with union leaders, a deal that would have shielded workers from layoffs for two years in exchange for wage freezes, spikes in insurance premiums and furloughs. Under state law, the workers' current contract remains in effect until a new pact is negotiated.

Mr. Brynien and most of PEF's leadership had urged its 52,000 members to accept the deal. But a faction led by an anonymous group of members called PEF Proud marshaled anger at the contract's terms.

Wayne Bayer, a member of PEF's executive board who works for the Department of Environmental Conservation, said union members printed leaflets posted on PEF Proud's blog and distributed them at contract forum meetings. "It caused a lot of chatter," he said.

"It got people thinking and questioning, and the truth is, there wasn't anything good in the contract," said another PEF board member, Jim Blake, a computer programmer and systems analyst for the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Anxiety spread throughout the Capitol and among public workers as the consequences of PEF's vote set in Wednesday.

The Office of Mental Health—an agency with 17,000 civil servants that runs state psychiatric hospitals such as Creedmoor in Queens and the Pilgrim Psychiatric Center on Long Island—was hit with the most layoffs at 643. Layoff figures topped 300 at several other agencies, including corrections, transportation, tax and finance, and developmental disabilities.

The layoffs won't affect the 65,000 members of the Civil Service Employees Association, which approved a deal with similar terms over the summer.

The governor's office said it is nearly impossible to know which workers will be forced out of their jobs and leave state government because each eliminated position trickles down an arcane flowchart of seniority.

Technically, workers aren't laid off—a term not defined in state law. In most cases, they are "bumped," a process referred to as "vertical displacement." More senior employees whose civil-service titles are wiped out can remain employed by taking the jobs of, or "bumping," workers occupying lower-level titles. When laid-off workers aren't eligible to bump someone else, they still may not be out of luck. If they've worked in a different full-time government position in the past, they can return to the old job, even if it's occupied by somebody else. That's called "retreating." If that's not an option, workers can try to get hired by another agency or branch of government not controlled by the governor, like the comptroller's office.

Two decades ago, Gov. Mario Cuomo, the current governor's father, ordered several thousand layoffs to trim a work force that had grown to a record-high of nearly 260,000.

The actual numbers of layoffs that resulted was estimated but not known for certain. The Albany Times Union at the time reported that 40% of the laid-off workers retained positions in state government.

"When the process is over months from now, it's highly unlikely that 3,500 people will have been involuntarily separated from their jobs," said E.J. McMahon, a fiscal analyst at the Empire Center for New York State Policy.

Write to Jacob Gershman at jacob.gershman@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...615237904.html

[Lebanese Dragon]

When unions get ot of hand it's ridiculous.. you'd have thought though, with the job-crisis, they'd have lost a lot of power.

[Aimless]

Er would I be entirely incorrect in assuming that this governor's main agenda is not to reduce deficits but rather to shaft unions?

[CitizenCain]

Er would I be entirely incorrect in assuming that this governor's main agenda is not to reduce deficits but rather to shaft unions?

Maybe not entirely, but "almost entirely," perhaps. He did work with the unions, negotiated deals that satisfied the need to plug budget shortfalls, and that satisfied union leaders... but if the membership rejects the new contract, what option is there to reduce costs, except to reduce the number of employees? If he wanted to shaft the unions, he wouldn't have negotiated in the first place, or spared the axe for the unions that accepted new deals.

[Flixy]

Two questions spring to mind: 1. do I understand correctly they are only firing workers from that particular union? 2. How the fuck did you get such a crazy scheme involving bumping and retreating

[Dreadnaught]

Er would I be entirely incorrect in assuming that this governor's main agenda is not to reduce deficits but rather to shaft unions?

Yes, that is not correct. He's basically a left-wing governor who has bent over backwards to work with the unions to reduce costs. But he's also proved himself to be highly rational. Now that this one union won't help the governor right-size state spending, he's doing something unthinkable in this region of the US: sticking to his guns and laying-off employees to balance the budget.

Two questions spring to mind: 1. do I understand correctly they are only firing workers from that particular union? 2. How the fuck did you get such a crazy scheme involving bumping and retreating

Yes, just from that particular union.

The seniority-bumping is one of the many insane things here. The unions have inserted language into state legislation in the past that makes it impossible to terminate their jobs based on merit. Instead, the union gets to work around seniority and how long someone has been in a job.

Ironically, this requires firing more union members because older people tend to be paid more.

[Flixy]

Yes, just from that particular union.

That sounds somewhat illegal in the Netherlands, but our unions are quite different. In this context, it sounds reasonable.

The seniority-bumping is one of the many insane things here. The unions have inserted language into state legislation in the past that makes it impossible to terminate their jobs based on merit. Instead, the union gets to work around seniority and how long someone has been in a job.

Ironically, this requires firing more union members because older people tend to be paid more.

That is stupid. And their pay doesn't even go down when they are bumped down?

[CitizenCain]

It does go down, or can, but since pay is determined largely based on seniority, it doesn't go down a whole lot, even if they're "retreated" in a job with a lower pay grade. Got that same problem with public unions in Ohio too.

But it looks like the leftie New Yorkers have it much worse, so...

[LittleFuzzy]

Er would I be entirely incorrect in assuming that this governor's main agenda is not to reduce deficits but rather to shaft unions?

Why? Because he's acting after the union rejected the negotiated deal rather than returning to the negotiating table while the old contract remains in force including for any new hires?

[Flixy]

Why? Because he's acting after the union rejected the negotiated deal rather than returning to the negotiating table while the old contract remains in force including for any new hires?

Don't forget even the union leaders were for the proposal.

[LittleFuzzy]

That sounds somewhat illegal in the Netherlands, but our unions are quite different. In this context, it sounds reasonable.

It would be problematic here too, except that what they're doing ISN'T firing people just from that specific union. They're firing people with that particular set of negotiated contracts. So people in such-and-such positions whose wages are expected to increase by X amount next year and/or whose benefits costs in excess of Y, etc. Even if the populations are completely the same the former is an action based on who THEY choose to associate with and the latter is an action based on accounting.

[Aimless]

Yes, that is not correct. He's basically a left-wing governor who has bent over backwards to work with the unions to reduce costs. But he's also proved himself to be highly rational. Now that this one union won't help the governor right-size state spending, he's doing something unthinkable in this region of the US: sticking to his guns and laying-off employees to balance the budget.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/ny...pagewanted=all

He may have been supported by PEF but he's never given anyone reason to think that he unions. The deal he demands they accept has been presented as being insincere and unreliable in that it will entail wage-freezes (= lower salaries over time) as well as greater expenses for union members without actually committing to not laying off union members. I think they shoulda taken the deal because this guy seems pretty aggro but I can see how they might want a renegotiation. Moreover, his talk of needing to save 400 mil on union members is being contrasted with his decisions wrt taxing rich New Yorkers and his decision to invest 400 mil on that nanotech research centre thing. Admittedly the latter may create jobs but hardly the jobs the union cares most about. Their position is therefore that union members are being forced to take an unfairly large share of the concessions Cuomo says are necessary.

[Loki]

Are you serious? The guy is a left-winger (albeit not as left-wing as some others in New York). He's certainly not anti-union. He's asking the unions to take some cuts in exchange for job security, an offer that's not made to a vast majority of non-public sector workers. How is he being insincere? Or does sincerity mean ignoring massive budget deficits?

[Dreadnaught]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/ny...pagewanted=all

He may have been supported by PEF but he's never given anyone reason to think that he unions. The deal he demands they accept has been presented as being insincere and unreliable in that it will entail wage-freezes (= lower salaries over time) as well as greater expenses for union members without actually committing to not laying off union members. I think they shoulda taken the deal because this guy seems pretty aggro but I can see how they might want a renegotiation. Moreover, his talk of needing to save 400 mil on union members is being contrasted with his decisions wrt taxing rich New Yorkers and his decision to invest 400 mil on that nanotech research centre thing. Admittedly the latter may create jobs but hardly the jobs the union cares most about. Their position is therefore that union members are being forced to take an unfairly large share of the concessions Cuomo says are necessary.

Funny, I recall posting that as an example of him going against the mold.

You're really misreading that: Cuomo is a left-winger. Seriously. But he's also a stone-hearted pragmatist in some respects and he wants the governor's office to be more powerful. His proposed "campaign" was his way of scaring-off the unions from doing what they always have done, which is use their control of the state legislature to undermine the governor's need to pass a budget.

His rhetoric was simply rhetoric until he actually started issuing layoff notices. Now we have a real revolution here, but it's hardly on the scale of banning collective bargaining or the mass layoffs I support. Cuomo is mainly just being a tough negotiator; he was and remains a devoted left-winger.