In Soviet Russia, joke laughs at *you*

[cyrano]

A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the tea partier and says,"look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie."
#socialist joke reJLed from @Dolores Flanagan

Comments

[miss-friday.livejournal.com]

Yeah, not so much on the funny. CA alone has $500 billion in unfunded pension liabilities owed to public, unionized employees. That number does not count the health benefits owed to same retired employees and their families. Let's try this instead:

A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 7 cookies. The unionized public employee reaches across, takes 5 cookies, and then yells at the other two: "You stole *my* cookies!"

[amanda_lodden.livejournal.com]

So, wait... because CA spent money that was supposed to be earmarked otherwise, unionized employees are bad? What, are we talking about pensions for 500 employees, who each get a billion dollars? Or are we talking about a lot of employees with reasonable pension amounts, for which the employee's salary was reduced via the magic of "if you take X, I'm going to cut back on Y" negotiations between an employer and their base of employees (via a collective bargaining agreement).

There are dozens and dozens of reasons to hate unions, but "there are things they bargained for but no one planned properly for" is probably not one of the best ones. Maybe we could change the joke to be how several unionized public employees each get the same number of cookies regardless of whether they are hungry or not, or whether they might prefer a slice of cake instead.

[miss-friday.livejournal.com]

Two points: 1) CA public employees are not underpaid when compared to workers in the private sector. The SEIU did not bargain away salary in order to boost pensions. Both the UC Berkeley Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics and the American Enterprise Institute agree on this. Private sector workers are paid somewhere between 0-4% more than public sector employees, not including either side's benefits. 2) The public pension system in CA does cover tens of thousands of works, thousands of which game the system to their benefit. Why are they allowed to do this? Because their union-negotiated contracts allow them to; union leaders have demanded these provisions and the government has allowed them. To demonstrate the magnitude of the problem, an abbreviated list of changes recommended by the recent "Little Hoover" report:

Cap the salary that can be used to determine pension allowances, or cap the pension, at a level that is reasonable and fair. Once the employee exceeds the threshold, employees and employers could make additional retirement contributions into a risk- managed, 401(k)-type defined-contribution plan.

Set appropriate pension eligibility ages to discourage early retirement of productive and valuable employees.

Set a tight definition of final compensation, computed on base pay only, over a five-year average to prevent and discourage pension “spiking.”

Set uniform standards for the maximum hours that retirees can return to work and continue to receive public-sector pensions.

Set uniform standards and definitions for disability benefits.

Restrict pension allowances to exclude service in an elected office.

Eliminate the purchase of “air time.”

Strengthen standards for revoking or reducing pensions of public employees and elected officials convicted of certain crimes involving the public trust.

I would revise by earlier edit of the joke though, replacing "public sector union employee" to "public sector union boss." Union leaders and CEO's are just like Democrats and Republicans, different sides of the same plug nickel.