Unions must help ease tax burden

The people who benefit most on Long Island are government officials & employees, school officials and teachers, and police officers. What do all of these people have in common? These are all positions that are supposed to serve the public good. Yet, these are now the highest paid people on average in Long Island. Yes the average private sector wages are now dwarfed by the average wages of all of these professions. In addition, public sector personnel are guaranteed cost of living increases and generous benefits regardless of the tax burden on the residents. Why? because these personnel are members of powerful unions whose political clout is legendary. No politician is willing to risk political suicide by treading on the “rights” of the unions.

Human resources – wages and benefits – are 60-70% of an organization’s operating expense be it a major corporation, government or quasi-government agency. We routinely hear of private enterprises cutting costs through attrition and as a last resort, layoffs. Yet, public agencies cannot effectively reduce their budgets (which in turn would reduce taxes) because they can never touch the most expensive part of the budget, union-protected wages and benefits. What’s left is cutting costs through the reduction of services, services that are very often popular and/or vital like when a school district threatens to cut art, music or sports. These savings of course are miniscule and can never offset the annual wage increases and perks stipulated by the unions. Yes, the unions are doing their job by protecting the wages and benefits of their members. However, it cannot be that those wages and benefits become a tax burden to the very people they are supposed to serve. The purpose of the union was to equalize the earnings of their public sector members in light of what they would be earning in the private sector, not to have earnings that are above and beyond the call of duty, literally.

The fact is we have to cut taxes. We have to think smart about how we are going to rein in these costs. Our elected officials must appeal to the unions to come to their senses for the public good by starting with some reasonable fixes. One is to have public sector workers contribute a greater portion of their health and retirement benefits just like those workers in the private sector. Every one from top to bottom with no grand-fathering could pay a percentage. If everyone active and retired paid a small percentage that would return millions to the public coffer for all to benefit – not some. Another painless solution is for unions to give greater leeway to public agencies to reduce personnel through attrition instead of demanding that those jobs remain on the books. We have to start somewhere.