I read in Greg Bean’s recent column of his and others’ displeasure with public workers’ sick and vacation day buy-backs and other benefits they receive when retiring. You are right that some of these stories are appalling, but perhaps you vent your spleen in the wrong direction.
These benefits and others like pensions, health, dental and prescription drug programs come under what is called deferred compensation. That is when instead of paying a worker his full salary when he does his job, management holds on to a portion of it until some future date.
I am a former wage slave like you, working 40 years in the private sector and in a union. In that time I have never heard of any worker or union representative going into wage negotiations looking for deferred compensation. In fact, unions have had tough times selling deferred compensation to the rank and file during contract negotiations. Most workers want to be paid in full when they are raising families and only care about health care when they are in the emergency room and pensions when they turn 60.
Deferred compensations are the product of the fertile minds of management. In the private sector they helped them hold on to their cash longer, provided funds for business purposes and until health care costs went ballistic a pretty secure program. They were also important in creating employee loyalty and maintaining a trained work force. The public sector management went way beyond the private sector, of course, creating all sorts of deferred compensation programs knowing full well they were just going to pass the bill on to someone else .
These managers, our elected leaders, negotiated and signed legal binding contracts with their workers. The workers went out and performed their duties and met their contractual obligations. The employer did not. For years they did not meet their contractual obligations. They did not fund the programs they created as they were obligated to do.
In fact, they have even gone so far as to steal $400 million or $500 million of the workers’ contributions from the state pension fund (see Gov. Christie Whitman) and privatize funds like the state prescription drug program so a protégée could go with it and make over $13 million a year to manage it in the private sector (see Gov. Whitman and Doug Forrester).
In any normal society the actions of the leaders of this state would be considered outrageous, immoral and criminal, but no, we are blessed with a great governor who travels the length of the land preaching that the evilness and greed of the working man is the cause of all our problems, and with the unwavering support of the media, even the working man believes it.
Tom Cunningham South Amboy