Generally, if you employ somebody and you find you just can’t afford their services, you come to some sort of an arrangement. You ask them if they’ll work for less and, if they can’t, you may have to come to a parting of the ways. I’ve been thinking about this with regard to Wisconsin. The governor is basically saying that the taxpayer can’t afford the salaries and perks created by collective bargaining by public unions. The unions reply: You have no choice, ho, ho, ho.
Most Americans have a soft spot for unions. But I think they need to know more about the money ordinary folks are forking out because for public “servants.” Should we really have to pay our employees more than we are pulling down? The latest revelation on public salaries comes from the New York Daily News:
Nearly 1,000 state employees made more than the governor’s $179,000 salary last year, the Empire Center for New York State Policy found.
“As a taxpayer, I’d be interested in less people making more than my governor, not more,” said Empire Center director Tim Hoefer.
Many of the state’s most lavishly compensated employees are at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, where Stephen Onesti, boss of the neurosurgery department, and Alain Kaloyeros, who heads the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at SUNY Albany, made $974,605 and $763,289 respectively. CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein made $560,000 last year.
You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know that this is unfair for the taxpayer.