Posts Tagged ‘Gerald McEntee’

Anti-worker pundits and politicos have been attacking public sector workers, but anyone with a lick of sense knows it wasn’t workers who created the economic crisis.  AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee has a nice rebuttal to attacks on public sector workers.

McEntee points out that public sector workers like librarians, corrections officers, cops and firemen are hardly rolling in money:

AFSCME’s non-teaching public employee members earn, on average, $45,000 a year to protect the public and the most vulnerable members of our society. After a career of service, our members retire with modest pensions of about $19,000 per year. And, unlike most private sector workers, our members typically contribute towards this pension benefit.

And while anti-worker voices say it’s unfair for public sector workers to have better benefits than private sector, they’re right.  They just have their solution backwards:

What is truly galling for private sector employees is the outright refusal of our political and economic elites to recognize and deal with stagnant wages and eroding retirement and health security. Our nation’s problem is not that public service workers have decent pensions, it is that so many other employees don’t.

It’s not a coincidence that a higher percentage of public sector workers belong to unions and they have fair wages and benefits.  Unions exist to give workers the power to making a decent living and have respect on the job.  When our labor laws catch up to our values, the American Dream will be back in reach for millions of workers—in all sectors of the economy.