Danny Donohue, President of the Civil Services Employees Association in New York State (a union that represents clerical workers) wrote an editorial in today’s Albany Times Union entitled: CSEA’s pension costs are not out of control.

In part he states:

First of all, the average CSEA pension is $11,000. That’s hardly excessive, especially when you consider that worker pay is at its lowest level in nearly 40 years and corporate profits are at the highest level ever recorded. Meanwhile, corporate CEOs are making 450 times what their average employee makes, and tax cuts for the wealthy are being handed out like candy to trick-or-treaters.

The typical Union line… Everyone else is so rich, we’re so poor. I guess Mr. Donohue fails to recognize the fact that he represents clerical employees. He also fails to realize that state pension costs are not CSEA’s pension costs (as his editorial’s title would suggest).

I think Mr. Donohue was absent from school on the day they talked about working hard and focusing on achievement. He might have missed the lesson on basic capitalism as well. He probably never missed a lesson on the philosophies of Marx, Lenin, and Mao.

Just because someone makes more money or just because companies are profitable, and that profit inures to those who put up the money to make it so, is not an evil in and of itself. Certainly, everyone deserves a fair wage and appropriate benefits (heath care for instance). What they do not deserve is to be treated as if they are someone else. A clerical employee by rights makes far less than a professional employee. Both make less than upper management or executives. Makes you want to go out and get an education, work hard, and get ahead doesn’t it?

He goes on:

Second, pension costs are not out of control. The governor himself says the impact of cost-of-living adjustments and other recent pension improvements has been negligible. What makes today’s pension costs seem overwhelming to many localities is that, for more than a decade, they had to pay nothing at all due to the success of the financial markets. In fact, employers are still paying less today, in terms of percentage of payroll, than they were years ago.

Yet the taxpayer is bearing the cost. That’s you and me (the government employer is us). It’s not the government employer versus the working man. It’s the taxpayer having to bear the costs of union dictated demands, agreed to by the politicians that are in their pockets.

This point also begs the question, What if I as a taxpayer do not want to fund pensions? What if I, and enough of my fellow citizens, would prefer that we keep our money for our own benefit? What if we preferred to invest in education, roads and bridges, or any of a thousand other priorities?

Look at the bills passed by the New York State Legislature in the past session. Thankfully the governor vetoed almost seventy (70) bills, the majority of which were pro-union giveaways to the tune of $1 billion in additional union benefits (reference here).

That’s part of the perpetual cost of unionized government employees. Sure, hiring a contractor may be more costly on a hour by hour basis, but once the contract is done the cash flowing out stops. With government employees the costs go on and on, and in some cases go on even after they die.

Now here’s the oxymoron:

Finally, suggesting that taxpayers will benefit by reducing public employee benefits to the levels of their nonunion counterparts in private industry ignores years of good faith bargaining between the state and its unions to negotiate contracts that are fair for everyone, including the taxpayers.

CSEA is not going to apologize for helping our members get a fair deal. Our wages and benefits are the result of years of responsible, good faith bargaining, and we’ve earned a reputation as a union that gets results while being fair and responsible. After all, our members are taxpayers, too.

If they did so well, why did he state in his opening that the —average CSEA pension is $11,000. That’s hardly excessive, especially when you consider that worker pay is at its lowest level in nearly 40 years…— Did they, or did they not do well by their members?

CSEA should be focusing on the big picture in New York State. There will be no jobs, no raises, no pensions, and no healthcare if employers, the young, and the general population (i.e., taxpayers) continue to leave in droves for low tax, small bureaucracy, and high employment states. The unions (along with all the other special interests) need to get on board and give up quite a bit to get to the point where New York is a viable, growing, and attractive state.

CSEA would do even better by focusing its energies on honesty – telling their members that they need to prepare for a future. CSEA should develop retraining and education efforts to move their members to a future without clerical employees. Clerical employees, whom they vehemently represent, are a throw back to the 1950’s. The days of rooms full of clerks processing paper are long gone. That is why state bureaucracy is so screwed up. Professionals are needed, paraprofessionals are needed. No one needs a file or steno clerk any longer (and if they think they do they should wake up and re-engineer).

I’ve said it before —“ compulsory union membership is un-American, is not democratic, it is extortion, and is a form of involuntary association. New York needs Right to Work legislation now. New York politicians need to develop the courage to reject the small cadre of union members and their leaders, focusing instead on the good of all New Yorkers. Otherwise our dry cow will become a dead cow.