Alaska State Employees Association Business Manager Jim Duncan, second from left, leads union member in a chant during a rally at the State Office Building on Wednesday.
Michael Penn / Juneau Empire
Alaska State Employees Association Business Manager Jim Duncan, second from left, leads union member in a chant during a rally at the State Office Building on Wednesday.
Comments (23)
Add commentSize of Demonstration
How many people attended?
Here's a idea, go get a real
Here's a idea, go get a real job !
Bfranklin
It seems the syphillis is causing you to act agressivly old ben. You do realize that you namesake was a poltical employee as well.
bfranklin so lame
You have no idea what is going on do you, so before you make any comments do us a big favor...do your research first!
State employees only want their dignity and respect in their workplace. Not so much to ask. How many of you don’t get that respect from your own workplace. The cost of living is growing and I know many of us feel our wallets are getting thinner.
Health cost to families, daycare for working families children, food cost, rental cost and so on.
Let’s talk salaries, hmmm from what I understanding is the State does not want to raise anyone’s salaries even though the cost of living is high, so that means these guys are working two to three jobs besides working for the state.
Some low paid salaried state employees are on food stamps for their families and just to get by paycheck to paycheck.
Knock off with the wise cracks comments, state workers are hard workers and are just like anyone else trying to do the best they can to provide for their families.
Hey Jim
How about the Unions get together and get a petition to amend the State Constitution and down size the legislature.
Union members en masse are
Union members en masse are scary...
Let's pray that Gov. Parnell doesn't have a Wisconsin on his hands.
@Calypso
I pray that he does and this time they win. The bonus is this time it wouldnt just be State employees signing a recall petition, it would be other people who dont appreciate voter initiatives be over-turned, AK Class ferry's being downsized to punts, 2 billion per year in tax breaks to his oil buddies and so forth. It wont happen but I say, bring on the petitions anyway. Its time he feels some heat from Alaskans who dont appreciate his Tea Party extremism.
@Calypso...
You are making a 'funny' right?
This is a lot closer to 'a few' than it is to 'en masse'......
We need a STRONGER labor movement in this state
We need much more private-sector unionization...it's only hurt us that "Wal-Mart" values have taken hold here.
Our only chance of survival as a decent place to live is to recognize that we're in this together, and that the rights of the many should matter as much as the privileges of the few.
The wealth belongs to the working people of this state, whoever we work for, since we're the ones who create it.
And, if it came down to it, the workers could, in fact, run this state's economy ourselves, and run it better.
.....
Couldn't they always get a private sector job? Can you say nepotism?
Wow! Jim Duncan and 20 supporters.......
Good thing he doesn't need to get elected to earn a living!
He did get elected to the legislature many times
and actually, 20 people is not that unusual a turnout for a space that's pretty much designed to discourage turnout at such events.
Only thing Unions are good at
Only thing Unions are good at is keeping people in jobs that should be fired!
If things are so bad at the workplace that you have to chant...
...why not take your incredible skillset and amazing work ethic to the "real world" and compete with the rest of us? Oh yes. I forgot. Many (but certainly not all) Union members don't have an incredible skillset and amazing work ethic and can't compete in the free market.
Seriously, if you don't like the way things are at work, work with the management to make them more to your liking. But if they don't change, just move on. Chants, demonstrations, placards, etc... don't win many friends or gain you much respect, guys. Getting the job done as efficiently as possible does.
Sadly, effeciency does not pay . . .
When the legislature is about give away 2 billion to the oil industry while at the same time saying state/local employees should have their salary and benefits frozen, what does being a productive worker have to do with it. . . I say to the state employees they should be shouting louder. Administration should be doing its job by eliminating employees who do not pull their weight. The firing process is not easy, for good reason, but administration should be competent enough to navigate within the system to affect a productive work environment. Reducing wages is not going to help attract/retain good employees. At least a state employees' wages gives back to the state/local economy in the form of dollars spent at local businesses and tax revenue. Do you really think the oil money give-away would do the same? Keep the oil taxes where they are at and use half of the give-away amount to help employees keep up with the cost of living, fund education and take care of things in Alaska. No need to fatten the coffers at BP.
"At least a state employees'
"At least a state employees' wages gives back to the state/local economy in the form of dollars spent at local businesses and tax revenue." Only to a certain extent.
High Tide, that's the same logic that Pelosi used when trying to convince us that food stamps grew the economy. For every dollar a person receives in food stamps, Pelosi said that $1.79 is put back into the economy.
I'd say state employees' wages are closer to taking money out of one pocket and moving it over to the other pocket. Or you could call it redistribution.
Give me a private business anyday to generate revenue and grow the economy. We need producers and governments don't produce anything.
People having state jobs doesn't STOP you having business
It isn't "either/or", Calypso.
And there are many things that public employees do that are just as important as the creation of short-term profit.
But Ken, it's all about the
But Ken, it's all about the size of said government. At what point does it overwhelm the capitalist system?
@calypso and ken
You can't have this discussion in Alaska in the terms it can be had in the Lower 48. There really isn't a private capitalist economy in Alaska. Eighty cents out of every dollar in the Alaska economy was once in either th State or federal Treasury. Sorry, but you guys live in a socialist economy.
When I was director of labor relations, giving my due to my bosses, the only people who had more power over the Alaska economy than I did were in London and Riyahd. If I had a bad day, I could put Jim Duncan's union out on strike and take a few billion dollars out of the economy. You really don't want to think about what would happen if the State of Alaska didn't make its payroll.
You need another paradigm for this argument. Whether you're the real estate agent trying to sell a house or the mechanic fixing a car, the money you're being paid with once resided on the 11th Floor of the SOB in Juneau; you need to find another argument.
If it's socialist, it needs to be democratic socialist
(that's a "small" d, not a "large" D, so don't take it as a partisan thing, folks).
If it's going to be owned by the state in the name of the people, the people themselves need a real say in how its dealt with.
I think if it were, we'd find ways to develop the resources without playing "chicken" with the environment and our ultimate survival.
And if Riyadh has influence over our economy now, it would have even MORE influence if we went on a privatization spree and turned everything that's currently state-owned over to corporations(which, let's face it, is what would happen..."small business" wouldn't enter into it in a scenario like that).
Union Naysayers
To all who don't agree what unions are about. A few things to consider:
Do you like having a lunch break?
Do you like having a morning or afternoon break?
Do you enjoy going home after 8 hours of work?
Do you like getting paid overtime if you have to stay and work late?
Do you like getting travel pay and travel expenses?
Do you like being treated fairly at work?
Do you like a wage that you can actually get by on?
Do you think child labor laws are good?
Well then you can thank the unions for all of those things. Before unions were formed none of these things would have come to be when they did. I thank the unions for providing good jobs with good pay and good training requirements! Thank you unions!
A couple more benefits
I forgot to mention a couple of the more amazing benefits the unions brought about. Retirement plans, pensions and health insurance..more things no one had until the unions made it happen. There are many benefits unions made a reality that everyone just takes for granted and assumes that have always been there. And just so you know, union employees, just like non-union employees can be laid off or fired.
In a democracy workers do not
In a democracy workers do not need a union to protect them from the government. They can vote.
In the private sector a union is understandable and necessary. But in the public sector a union breeds laziness an ineptitude.
You're forgetting about folks like the Koch Bros.
Who can pretty much buy any state election they want, and won't stop until they've de-unionized every state government in the country...
And in every situation where people lose union representation, even in the public sector, they end up being forced into massive concessions...mass reductions in pensions, health benefits. Overtime pay is put at risk. They lose protections against management abuse or arbitrary termination. If they're lucky, they get to keep their existing wages. They're told "if you don't like it, you can d__n well leave", which isn't something anybody deserves to be told. In other words, they are stripped of their dignity.
And NONE of those losses makes any level of government work better, or helps anybody outside the public sector workforce except for speculators on Wall Street. It doesn't do any "mom and pop store" types any good at all.
The fact is, government isn't evil, and working for the government isn't evil. To have a civilized society, you have to have a decent social wage, protections against unregulated competition and also against the creation of monopolies, against barbaric things like child labor(and unfairly harsh treatment of farm labor and household labor), and ways to stop those who, if they had their way, would choke us all to death on industrial pollutants just so they could earn a short-term buck-in other words, we need government in order to keep us from sliding back into the worst of the 19th Century(the century in which "market values" inspired the creation of unions and the proposal of new economic models through its relentless ugliness). Why on earth would anyone even want to risk going back to such a cruel way of life? That wasn't "freedom"...it was life as either being a bully or being bullied.
A small government society means we would be at the mercy of that type of bully values again, with no means of protecting ourselves against their brutality and their constant campaign to reduce everything to making money, with nothing else being considered a worthwhile way to live at all.
We went through that misery once. It would be insane to go back.