Better Days?

The Big Lug Nut and AFSCME Iowa Council 61 President Danny Homan are pictured in happier times, when both were living off the fat of the land.

Bitter days is more like it now and the scientific community is united in that fact.

AFSCME Iowa Council 61 announced the results of a membership vote on whether to accept cuts in pay and benefits, this budget year, in exchange for preventing layoffs for union members.

By a margin of 59% to 41%, members agreed to take five days of unpaid leave and giving up about $75 a month in retirement contributions.

66% of union members voted, I believe Homan referred to it as a historic vote with their highest percentage ever.

That's really sad, especially since they mail the ballot to your home and provide a postage paid return envelope.

Homan noted the five unpaid days can be scheduled consecutively, like vacation days, which would allow that employee to qualify for unemployment benefits.

Homan suggested that the state needs to "Raise more revenue" and that can be accomplished by a couple of ways, "Either get rid of some tax exemptions, or, hang on, here comes the big 'T' word, do a tax increase so that the only people balancing the state budget aren't state employees."

There's some sympathy for workers in the private sector who don't get a vote on taking unpaid days, layoffs or pay cuts when their employers face economic hardships.

Let me see if I get this straight.

AFSCME Iowa Council 61 wants you (the taxpayer) to pay more with less earnings because their well compensated members (taxpayer employees) don't want to lose anymore of their benefits that have increased by 151%, five times the rate of inflation, since 1999.

State workers as a group make nearly $5,400 more a year on average in base salary and receive $4,700 more in benefits than their private-sector counterparts.

And you need to shoulder more of the responsibility?

Fat of the land!

Finally, if I was a non-union state employee that lost my job while a less senior union member kept theirs, I would be suing the State of Iowa and AFSCME Iowa Council 61 over this agreement.

The union has a legal responsibility to represent all the workers, whether they are members or not, it seems to me that bargaining away non-union jobs would be a violation of Iowa's "Right to Work" law.