[PRCo] Re: Shaker

[Fred Schneider]

I tend to be rather cynical too Herb but I have to admit that my  
salary in management with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania increased  
significantly because the unions pushed the wages beneath me upward  
in the 1970s and 1980s.  Today there is a two and three tier  
retirement system, but I'm in the older system.   I benefitted by the  
wage increases but I did loose in the cutbacks in hospitalization.    
And, by being in management, I didn't have to pay any union dues.  On  
the other hand, John Swindler gets a fatter pension than I do but he  
has to contribute to his hospitalization.   I'm not sure who got the  
better deal.    I can assure you that the salaries began to drop  
backward after the unions lost strength.

But I have to relate a funny story.   There was a great lady that I  
worked with when I ran an interagency committee back in the early  
1980s ... after she retired she moved back to live with her daughter  
in Sacramento and for all I know she may be dead now.    But she knew  
how to work the system.    Under Governor Thornburg, the State  
Department of Education illegally decided to clean house of all its  
elderly employees to avoid later paying pension benefits.   Ginny  
hauled them into court.   And she just sat back and waited.   It took  
several years for the case to run through the courts.  Many of the 50  
or so others were forced to take other jobs.   But she owned an  
apartment building in Harrisburg and she also had a son in Houston  
who was earning into seven figures in real estate so she had no  
worries.   Her lawyer told her that he never had a case so easy to  
win before ... the state had lowered the average age of the  
department by something like 10 years.    Just before she won, she  
took a clerk's job in the department from which she had been fired.    
And when the settlement came through, suddenly that clerk's pay was  
elevated to the roof.   She was upper management and it was back  
dated.   The others in her class action suit had intermediate  
earnings deducted but she had no outside earnings except for that  
piddling little state job at the end.

Now let's let the other shoe drop.   Her biggest defense was the  
union.   Why?   Why would the union defend management.   Because  
Ginny was no dummy.   All the years she worked for the state, she  
voluntarily paid union dues just to support the union.   Then when  
they tried to clean house, the unions were her strongest defenders.    
They hired the best lawyers money could buy to support her, a lady  
who had been in upper management!

But it didn't end there.   She had a year less than she needed when  
they fired her to retire with full pension.   Now she had two more  
years state service.   So she tried, in accordance with rules, to buy  
her California teaching time into the Pennsylvania pension system.    
They blocked her again.   She sued again.   The courts ruled that the  
laws were there for everyone, not just the political friends.   The  
state paid for her attorney and court costs.   She bought back the  
time she had in California, retired, and moved back to California.

Yellow book.com shows a Sacramento phone listing....    Maybe I  
should call and say hello.

On Nov 11, 2007, at 9:07 PM, Herb Brannon wrote:

> Local 328 of the Amalgamated Transit Union is half the problem in  
> Cleveland. The other half of the problem is the band of New World  
> Order henchmen otherwise known as RTA Upper Management. Annually we  
> (ATU 328 members) pay about $650.00 in dues and assessments to the  
> union. Every year the union gives us a turkey for Thanksgiving.  
> Thus, for the small payment of $650.00 we get a turkey to roast and  
> get to watch ten 'turkeys' trying to run a union.
> Jim Holland <PRCoPCC at P-R-Co.com> wrote:
> Push for your Union to make changes so you can choose Shaker and not
> lose snority.
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> Herb Brannon
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