Remember this. The public employee unions and the politicians they support are the worst people in the world to have fighting for your social service program during tough times. Because at the end of the day, the public employee unions and the politicians they control are looking out for #1, not the “little people,” Tom Conrad.
To the point, the Vallejo unions challenging that city’s decision to file bankruptcy argued that Vallejo ought to reduce the city’s quality of life and programs including Meals on Wheels, instead.
Two good learnings come from this.
1) The court denied the union appeal to Vallejo’s decision to declare bankruptcy. Let’s put that in the win column.
2) When push comes to shove, public employee unions and the politicians they support will quickly throw you and Meals on Wheels under the bus before they cut back their own exorbitant salaries, benefits, and unsustainable and luxurious pensions paid by taxpayers. Let’s put that in the HYPOCRISY column.
So the next time you read on Facebook someone pouring Kool Aid about local Democrats and Unions representing the “little people,” you can tell them to check in with reality and pump that sunshine into someone else’s ear. The next time you hear some union goon screaming at elected officials in public budget hearings about the evil of choosing fiscal responsibility over poor people, please tell them to look around. The suffering is their doing.
The California fiscal crisis exists today by and large because of politician sock puppets of public employee unions.
For example, here’s SEIU demanding their ox not get gored, to hell with Meals on Wheels.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTicE8vLS1k
From the decision
Alternatively, the Unions argue Vallejo could have avoided bankruptcy if it had made many minor changes. The Unions assert that if Vallejo had taken the Unions’ final offer to extend the March 2008 modification of the CBAs, Vallejo could have operated for another year. The Unions also contend that Vallejo’s projections were based on an erroneous assumption that the police and firefighters would be fully staffed. Lastly, the Unions assert Vallejo could trim its budget by cutting quality of life programs like Meals on Wheels and deferring maintenance on its vehicle fleet. For several reasons, the bankruptcy court found the Unions’ contentions illusory.
First, to the extent the Unions’ offer would keep Vallejo out of bankruptcy for the next fiscal year, the offer would not provide long term solvency beyond the first year. The offer imposed new onerous terms like 3-5% annual salary increases on top of the deferred 6.5% increase. The deferred 6.5% increase, suspended by the March 2008 modification, would either be reinstated by the start of the 2009-2010 fiscal year or by March 1, 2009. Once reinstated, the 6.5% increase would drive the General Fund back into a deficit. Thus, the bankruptcy court found Vallejo’s acceptance of the offer would not have balanced its budget.
Second, the bankruptcy court found Vallejo did not erroneously over-budget based on an assumption of full staffing. Due to the minimum staffing requirements for firefighters and the overtime paid to meet those requirements, Vallejo would not have realized any cost savings. The court noted the Unions’ evidence failed to account for lost revenue based on vacant, reimbursable positions.[FOOTNOTE 22] Some of those reimbursable positions came from the police and fire departments. Also, due to the unprecedented number of employee departures, Vallejo had to pay $5.3 million in payout obligations. Yet, the Unions’ witness did not account for the costs of anticipated departures in his staffing analysis.
Third, Vallejo already cut much of its discretionary budget. Vallejo reduced employee rolls and continuously cut funding to services like the senior center, library and parks. Alarmingly, most of Vallejo’s vehicles were near the end of their expected lives and many of the vehicles had already been extended past that life. Vallejo could have cut more services, but the court found that it had reduced expenditures to the point that municipal services were underfunded. More importantly, the court found further funding reductions would threaten Vallejo’s ability to provide for the basic health and safety of its citizens.