Poll - Are you a unionized employee?

Are you a unionized employee?

One is the loneliest number lol.

Shouldn't there be another option "Never want to be"?

Or another option, "choose not to be/opted out".

Not since 1999, and nevermore.

Are you an employer? Are you self-employed? Are you unemployed?

Yep, unionized hospital employee. Not all bad, but not all good either.

cc

\Self employed and no parachute.

Amazed at how many government/unionized pensioners are out here in Mexico living in what most would call luxury.

That to me would imply that the average workplace had much better pension benefit's in the past and also that more of them were unionized. Is this necessarily a bad thing?

Alot of private pensions are in trouble. Large companies were underfunded not to metnion substantial losses incurred in the investment of said funds. In the us the salvation reverts to governemnts handing out taxpayer funds and mortgaging futures.

Government pensions on the other hand are immune.They have the taxpayer to bail them out.

I heard the City pension is undefunded ( taxpayer side ) but not sure how its administered employees vs. taxpayer side. Regardless, it seems tax[ayers shoulder an enormous amount of contrivbutions without any personal benefit. In essence we fund other peoples retirements , Municipal, Provincial and Federal Level. Personally, I'd like to opt out of this situation.

Can't speak too much for public pensions but a very large percentage of underfunded private pensions are underfunded solely due to profit taking/cooking books rather than fullfilling pension obligations. Thank god in Canada at least we have laws that prevent the total collapse of the funds unlike the US. It should be illegal for private companies NOT to meet their pension obligations first before any sort of profit taking can occur. It is morally wrong to skimp on your agreed pension obligations while at the same time pumping up your stock price with artificially inflated profits.

As far as I know the CoW pension is equally funded by the employer and employees.

by employer you mean taxpayer ?

Agree, pension funds if agreed to in the private sector should be funded through profits or an expense line item, that said, the privates have no protection and you can have pension funds completleyly collapse and only an anti capitalist move like taxpayer funding will bail them out....see USA

You could even argue that indirectly they're partially self-employed .

The private sector employee pensions should have protection against corporate boards that put short-term profits ahead of long term commitments.

The question is , should tyaxpayers be on the hook to pay for that protection ?

Does that proection paymnet extend to everyone in society. What about the large percentage who do not have the luxury of a pension plan ? should they not be afforded the same.

At one time that was the vvery argument and reasoning govwernment employess and unions used. ui\f the pricate sector has it , we want it. We want to be like th epriovate sector but we';; one up them, we'll have the same benfits and more but with taxp[ayers fully backing it.

Are you typing with gloves on?

Maybe on a smartphone? My typing is even worse on my phone lol.

I'm not a city employee, but I am unionized. As some know I'm a health care aide. It's an ok job financially but not what many think. I started off at 16.50 and this April I get my "huge government raise" of roughly 50 cents per hour. If I told you what I have to do and put up with for that 17/hour many here would lose their lunch. I work in an ICU and its fast paced all day nearly every day. Not all government employees are living large and have fat penions. If the public 'has to cover my pension' so be it, I bust my a$$ for the public everyday!!

People forget that part CC. It's not like your not earning you "fat paycheck" and "fat pension", most people (myself included) could not do your job. For some reason many feel that doing a job many others can't/wont do is not worth getting something extra for.

Anyone who wants to do my job I would challenge them to do CPR will full xray lead on, skirt, tunic, and throat guard for a good half hour forty five minutes and see how they do. Ofcourse there is no warning or warm up for this exercise its done at a split seconds notice. Once you're done that they can go do 'clean up' on a few patients who may or may not be confused with multiple tubes and IVs coming out/going into them. That would be the first hour, and i'll hand them 17 dollars, ofcourse they will then hand over their taxes, union dues, pension contribution etc. How luxurious is that? If you pull that off for thirty five years, why shouldnt you get your pension which you can HOPEfully live in mexico on? And so we do all this on a daily basis, yet the bozo running the snowplow around gets paid more than me? Yeah I'd vote for strike action next time around.

I think that is the best spelling that Livio can handle! lol

The bozo running the snowplow is working for a private contractor and earning equal to or less pay than you but without any benefits. The city did the stupidest thing imaginable when they contracted out snow clearing. Now they get to pay more than they were in the past for less service, while elimininating good middle class jobs, and creating more wealth for a half dozen heavy construction contractors.

The snow clearing contracts come up every 5 years. Every one of the major contractors have 1 zone each currently, NONE of them have enough equipment to realistically do anyone else's zone. They all know this, and so when the tender's come up they all throw a ludicrously high bid at the zone's they don't have figuring they wont get it anyways and if they do then it's worth buying/leasing the additional equipment. Since they know they are in no danger of being undercut on their own zone's either they throw an extra 15- 25% pure profit on their own zone and everyone is happy.

Contracting out snow clearing was the stupidest most short sighted thing the city ever did, and now that all the equipment has been sold the capital costs alone are too high to get back in the game. New loaders and graders are upwards of $250k each, I'd love to see the uproar if the city spent $15-20million on capital expenditures to get back in the game. Instead we spend a few million a year more than we have to which all goes into pure profit for a handfull of individuals.

Before you had less total cost creating maybe a couple hundred good paying jobs that went back into the local community. Now we pay more, have replaced those jobs with $15-17/hr operator jobs and made a few millionaires wealthier. I wonder which is better for the community in the long run?

This is a classic example of outsourcing costing more in the long run.

Sorry, off on a tangent again.

Thanks for the work CC, it's much appreciated.

CC, why should I cover your pension ?

If you don't like the job you just started find another. At 17 bucks an hour, there would probably be a few inline to take it over.

Why should you be able to retire to Mexico on a nice "fat " pension while most in the private sector will only have Social security. What makes you so special ( I mean government employees )that you need anothers sweat to pay for your lifestyle after you retire ? If your union takes your dues and administers your pension contributions and doles it out to you when you retire , great. But if a taxpayer needs to subsidize your pension plan , well, thats just not fair and quite self serving. I fyour union chokes and blows your pension money , then that should be your problem and again taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook to make you good. Again see USA for possibly the finest example of capitalism gone wrong .

don't understand this rationale that taxpayers should be on the hook for everyones pension. Its a massive hidden tax that should not exist unless everyone gets the same deal.

Livio Ciaralli wrote:Why should you be able to retire to Mexico on a nice "fat " pension while most in the private sector will only have Social security.

This is what happens to people who refuse to work hard. They end up in jobs that don't compensate as well as they would like.

Those who choose to work hard are well rewarded.

No they are not Triniman. There are many hard-working folks who will never rise above a certain income level due to several factors.

But MizP I thought only the lazy/unmotivated were not rich?