Another Example of How Unions Are Often Bad For America ..

The Union Overtime Scam: How Three Years Robs Taxpayers for Decades

Before we start on this post, since we do end up on Google, we expect to get some nasty comments from people everywhere who don't know us. Let us take a minute to say something. We don't hate Unions.... many years ago, they served a useful purpose: to protect employees from wage discrimination and unsafe work environments. My dad was a Teamster in fact. But it seems to us that day has been passed on for a while.... Being back in New York, we've been trying to see how and where the taxation system got so out of whack, so that liberals in South Carolina, who seem hellbent on duplicating it, don't do the same there. If we were a Bible prophet, right now, we'd be Jeremiah....

Like we said, fair wages were the lynchpin of the start of unions. Rules were put in place to protect employees, but as with most things, with every rule, there is a way to abuse and manipulate it. Welcome to perhaps the biggest one of all - overtime.

It's very simple - and fixable. Union wages are based on 35-40 hours per week, and they get 1 1/2 times for OT, and 2x for Sunday. Easy enough, right? Where theirs and yours and mine differ is in the end... If your lucky, you have a 401k, Social Security (if it still exists), and that is IT... Union members have that and retirement pensions - something that most of us have never heard of. Well, that pension has a very small and costly codicile in it: an employee's pension is based solely upon the person's last three years of wages and overtime. At retirement (which is 50% for 20 years, 75% for 25 years, and 100% for 30 years), they get whatever that amount is for life.... So, what is the scam? OVERTIME is the scam...

Yes, in those last three years, an employee will work his/her ass off to guarantee a lifetime of fat pension checks, which is bad for the business/government agency and ultimately, consumers and taxpayers. Let's say you have a union garbageman making $60,000 per year. We'll bet you green money that yout will see him busting his ass starting in year 28. That 40 hrs suddenly becomes 60, and that $60k becomes $105,000 per year - and it NEVER ENDS. He will earn that $105k til he dies - and you pay it.

Fixing it is easy, and it almost sounds backwards - hire an additional employee. What, hire more people to SAVE MONEY? Yep. Watch.... Hire a new person (which you would need to do anyway in 3 years) at $50,000 per year (lower seniority, lower pay), and for the two guys, you spent $110,000. More importantly, you just saved $40,000 PER YEAR for the next 30-40 until that employee dies and stops collecting pension checks. That's $1.6 million dollars you saved - ON ONE EMPLOYEE ALONE !!!! It's not cruel or being cheap - it's giving the guy what he actually should be getting anyway - full pay. Dammit, we are smart......

Yes, for every cause, there is a solution, but this one may reside in Fantasyland. Why? Because the people who regulate an employee's hours are also Union members, who benefit from the same plan - the Fox Watching the Henhouse. Every company or local and state goverment should have a Pension Czar to oversee the spending, and taxpayers would see the changes eventually. Right! Meanwhile, we're going in the backyard to bury some beanstalk beans and look for four-leaf clovers.....

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