Michigan Votes Forum

 WHY 2010?  Why not now.  I commend you for wanting a decrease in your salary but I should say why only 5%!  You still have your forever health insurance, your forever retirement, your home, your automobile and allowances, yours perks, etc.  I remember when Gov. Engler was in office and was just about ready to leave his position he allowed a 40% wage increase to take affect for the state elected workers.  What a crime.  People were losing their jobs at that time also!!! and to have the elected people get that amount of an increase!!  I hope you will reconsider and take a closer look at how much you really are willing to take a cut in pay at.

 I totally agree with this Senate Joint Resolution U proposal.  Many of those working for the public sector are receiving pay and benefits that are much greater than those in the private sector.  Yet, our fizzling incomes are paying through our tax dollars to keep government workers at the status quo. Government workers are not sacrosanct from having to also experience the results of a recession.  

 I am an RN.  I have worked for the SOM for 10 years.  I can say with great assurance that I am not being paid a GREAT salary.  Nurses in the public sector make much more than nurses make working for government.  I am not sure where is this conception that State workers make all that much money, is coming from.  There are people who have Master Degrees that don't even make $50,000.00 a year, working for the state.  A pay cut would cause the SOM to loose the best talents.  The people with the most talent & skill.  It is important that the government set the tone for the talent in the State.  If they are not able to attract the best talents then how do expect other companies to come to Michigan & beleive they can hire talent for their company.  The people of Michigan would suffer greatly because you would no longer have the quality worker working for you.  THe government needs to offer a premium package to its workers so they can demand the best for Michigan citizens.  The government's Administrators no way make the kinds of money GM, FOrd, AGI or Citibank Execs make.  There is no State Administrator rolling around in a Benz or a Lexsus.  State administrators work ten times as hard.  Most State workers are dedicated to serving the people of this State & really do a good job & work very hard.  We deserve to be paid & we do not deserve a pay cut.  We have given up many conssesions for many years & we do understand, but we do not deserve a pay cut.[:'(] 

This has to happen! As the taxpayers lose their jobs and deal with continually lower wages, state employees continue to get wage increases. As for the nurse that says there are people with a Masters Degree making less than $50,000/yr for the State, she'd better look around: there are whole lot of people with a Masters making less than $50,000 n the private sector - many of them are unemployed! Lets face it, the employers of these people - US - cannot afford to continue to pay them more than we ourselves are making. It's reality. Start to deal with it!

truckingal:

This has to happen! As the taxpayers lose their jobs and deal with continually lower wages, state employees continue to get wage increases. As for the nurse that says there are people with a Masters Degree making less than $50,000/yr for the State, she'd better look around: there are whole lot of people with a Masters making less than $50,000 n the private sector - many of them are unemployed! Lets face it, the employers of these people - US - cannot afford to continue to pay them more than we ourselves are making. It's reality. Start to deal with it!

So here's the question.  If your wages are declining, or you are out of work, the tax burden on your own income is either declining or evaporating altogether, so how, then, will cutting public employees' wages benefit you?  

Surely, you cannot be so naieve and foolish as to believe this bill will either help you get a raise in pay or, if you are unemployed, create a job for you.

The fact is, cutting public employees' wages only would serve to dump more people into the rickety and fragile boat that has become our economy.  That cannot be in the public interest, short or long term. 

Further, don't ever forget that those public employees are citizens, too.  A  much touted purpose of our constitution -- both state and national versions -- is to protect individual citizens from being harmed by unreasonable exercise of government authority and power.  To amend our Michigan Constitution with a provision that clearly disadvantages a particular class of citizens, as SJR U proposes to do, is contrary to the most fundamental American philosophical belief that all citizens are entitled to equal treatment. 

By the way, I also would oppose passage of this or another resolution if it proposed a constitutionally mandated reduction in all employee wages in the state -- public or private.  I'm not a betting person, but in this case would bet a buck that I'd have a lot of company in my opposition to such a proposal.

SJR U is nothing more and nothing less than cynical demagoguery at work.  It should be rejected.

 I am a Full time Fire Fighter, and I do pay taxes and live locally so I understand what kind of economic situation everyone is in...I have two problems with this resolution; The first is that my community saw these problems coming a few years back and we have made concessions and taken on payments for benifits already. Financially my community is on very sound footing, they did a Headly roll back early and have made other tax cuts that while mainly symbolic did benifit the taxpayers. Why should I have to take additional pay cuts just because it's popular to beat up the municipal workers. My base pay is under $50,000.00, and I do not have a second job. My wife also works outside the home.

The second problem with this resolution is that I don't see anywhere that the politicians are giving up their perks, or benifits. Take out all free food, personal services, lifetime health care, kickbacks and handouts from vendors and lobbists and I might start to give this some thought.

As far as paying for health care I have no problem with paying a percentage of my health care benifits. If the state legislators really wanted to do some good they could enact laws that would prevent the health insurers from increasing premiums more than 5% annually. Many of them routinely increase their premiums more than 10% per year even given the rate of inflation this seems grossly excessive.

I work a 56 hour work week, I work those 56 hours in 24 hour shift increments. I am the only person at my station. I get tired of the perception that all fire departments are overstaffed, and under worked. We do more than just fight fire, we are called to all kinds of emergent and non emergent situations. Sometimes I get asked why we get called if a person's house is flooding, they are locked out of the house, their horse is stuck in the mud or other situations. Well they sometimes have no one else to call, and we have always been looked to for the answer. Waste of tax dollars maybe maybe not. If an emergency comes up while we are helping someone with a non-emergent problem we will handle the emergency then try and come back to help them. By us helping in these odd non-emergent situations we may be preventing an emergency situation from occuring.

While we don't run calls every minute of every day we don't just sit around the station either. We do a lot of our own vehicle maintenance and repair, as well as repairing and maintaining all the equipment we carry. We also have to do training to maintain our medical, hazardous materials and other certifications. We go and talk to the kids at schools about safety both in fire situations, and home safety as well. We do infant and child carseat installation and inspections at no charge to any person who walks in our doors.

We also do the building maintenance and repair both inside and out. Including mowing lawn, and snow removal.

We do take ownership in our jobs and in our community. I don't consider myself a hero I don't like that term applied to us. We are just doing a job that we like. Are we at risk for illness, injury or even death? Absolutely that's why we have the clothing equipment and staffing that we have. That's also why we have to do a lot of training and physical fitness. Can we do better at budgeting and managing the staffing and money yes. But so can every individual and corporation out there.

Put us under the microscope if you must but also make sure you see the big picture and have asked all the questions to get the true facts. We aren't the bad guys, and I wish we didn't have to see some of the stuff I have seen in over 30 years in EMS, and 25 years as a Fire Fighter. But be assured if you call and we are able we will come anytime anywhere. We work 24-7 365 I have worked many holidays, birthdays anniversarys etc. Our contract doesn't have compensation for regular scheduled days that fall on holidays weekends or birthdays. It's just another day for us.

Next time that you want to complain about us costing you and our community too much money ask yourself if you are willing to step up and help your neighbor or a complete stranger when his heart has stopped or have crashed their car or their house is on fire. I you can honestly say yes anytime any where then take your community back to an earlier time with all volunteer help and I really hope it is successful and efficent. If you aren't willing to go out in the middle of the night or leave your family during a severe storm or with tornado watches up, don't want to see blood, broken bones or even sadly sometimes dead people then support your Fire EMS and Law enforcement system. We take care of the problems you don't want to or aren't able to.

Privatize all of the services. Is it cheaper? I don't know. You still have to pay someone for hours equipment etc. Whether it's per incident, by subscription or a tax all services have a cost. Even if you have an all volunteer system there is still a cost for equipment, vehicles and buildings for the vehicles. With a private service the level of service is decided by what the CEO of that service has decided is covered by their fees. The risks of an all volunteer service is having help around all the time. What happens during the day when most people are at their paying job, or on a weekend, holiday or during family times? The call may not get answered or adaquetly staffed. Yes we call the neighboring communities for help but they are in the same situation as we are with small staffs and have their own calls going on.

I know this has gotten way off the original post but it all relates and maybe helps educate the public that at least this Fire Fighter while willing to share his part of the load isn't willing to take an arbitrary pay cut because a politician says so. Put pressure on the politicians to make cuts in their personal budgets and their long term benifits that are real and substantial first. Then lets look at the little people.

Thanks for your time.

 I totally agree with you truckingal.  My husband worked as a salaried employee for one of the auto companies. Before he retired he received the highest evaluation you can receive "Outstanding."  Many of those in the private sector who have received their degrees are now out of work.  Many of those in the private sector have received pay cuts, and more shoes drop on their benefits than they have feet.  Government may pay the public workers salaries, but does anyone stop and think where the government gets the money from to pay them?  From the taxpayers.  The taxpayers who have already experienced salary and benefit cuts - if they are lucky enough to still be employed.

I have met the best and the worst in public sector employees.  Whether in nursing, public works, township and city, law enforcement, et al.  The same can be said in the private sector.  The attitude that public employees work for a higher calling and are therefore all saints and sacrosanct is rediculous.

 I work for a small Municipality in Northern Michigan. I have seen 3 years of wage and retirement freezes, as have so many other small community workers. I understand what this bill is trying to do but why not put a bottom line on it, why not add a minimum salary/wage amount and target the people that are really taking advantage of the system. We have had cuts in our medical benefits and taken on high deductable packages just to keep health insurance. I understand that there are people in the private sector with out medical benefits and believe me when I say I'm sympathetic to those circumstances but when the private sector was booming we weren’t asking for tax increases to raise our salaries and why should this be any different? I have a $42,000.00 annual salary, I average much more than the 45 hours a week that my wage is based on, I am on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week, my work hours range from 3am to 10pm depending on the season. This isn't the old boys club down at your local coffee shop any more, we don't take breaks every 3 hours and we bust our butts every day to keep our jobs. We operate on a staff of 4 full time employees and just like almost every other small public works department in the state of MI we have been ordered no overtime, so we salary guys are taking the brunt and I am happy to do it, because it means that my guys keep their jobs. We are the people that plow your snow, clean your sewers, mow your parks, clean the streets and make sure the water you're drinking is safe, we patrol your neighborhoods and put out your house fires and we are running on tight, tight budgets; not because we are all overpaid but that when the private sector is hurting it affects the public sector, when people move out of town or state we lose that funding and what happens? We take wage freezes and benefit cuts. It's almost like people are angry because us "government" employees are still working, the same people that used to laugh at my wage when the housing industry was booming now thinks I'm overpaid??......Granted there are officials out there that are sucking all they can get out of us (remember I'm a tax payer too) but don't hurt the people who are part of the solution, we're not getting rich on your taxes trust me.

 Cutting 5% accros the board is asking too much for someone working in the public sector as a (praprofessional in a public school, Fireman, police officer or jantior)  The wages that need to be cut are those judges making 150K,  Public school superintendents and administrators making 100K to 200K.  Those insurance executives making 5 million a year of mandated car insurance were forced to buy-which provides no coverage if you really need it anyway- huge rip off.  There are some school teachers in those career technical centers making 105,000 per year right now at step 25.  But the new people starting off are getting around $28,000 per year and pay their own benefits.  Its those people who make those huge salaries that need to be capped-not the rest us struggling on meager wages.  This law is dumb because it doesn't zero in on the problem.  Everywhere, everybody is an idiot!!  Every law coming out of Lansing just screws us right in the behind!  and protects the rich and high salaried officials who have no integrity, character or credability. 

 Whatever happened to Obama's talk of taxing folks making over $250,000 and then it was lowered to $200,000.  That is where we need to be targeting change not somebody making under $100,000.  Has the good Senator looked at the headlines about what the companies CEO's are making again.  Try Barclays, or Avon ( a mere $7 million plus last year) or how about McDonald's CEO Skinner whose pay jumped 30%.  McDonalds James Skinner's base pay rose to $1.39 million in 2008.  He received $1.67 million in stock awards and $2.24 million in option awards.  He received $11.53 million in short - and long-term incentives and $743,350 in other compensation.

Legislators  and the Governor under ex Governor Engler in Michigan got 38% pay increases two years in a row.  Judges pay increases were tied to the Legislators and Governors.  At one time Michigan had the 14th highest paid Governor and Legislators and are probably close to that now although the economy is sure a lot lower than that.  Why not tied salary and pay increases to the economy? Bet we'd see some changes. 

Let's see, now. 

Cutting the wages of working people and eliminating their jobs has helped keep our state's economy strong like bull, so far, hasn't it? So why pussyfoot around anymore?  Let's get cracking on a real solution.

Here's a modest proposal for energizing the economy and rejuvinating the entrepenurial spirit in Michigan.

After eliminating public sector employment altogether, ban taxes, wages, salaries, stipends, benefits, etc..  Only individuals with an ownership interest in a private business enterprise will get to derive income from it.  Everybody else works for free, making sacrifices to keep the economy going.  That should be a reall winner, don't you think?  Get everybody involved in making sure the business of Michigan is business, and all that.

 What is wrong with you people?  Have you allowed this government destruction of the middle class to just take you over without a fight?  You are forgetting who the real culprits are in this whole mess and now you are bashing your own kinds.  The rich people of this country; the ones who make and control millions every year are the very same people who have put us all in this situation .  Can you even imagine earning 400 million dollars a year, or how about even a million?  These people play with your lives and control you like pawns in a game, and now they want to degrade the lives of state employees who work to serve their rich ego's.  Do not ever let the state reduce what you are worth.  These politicians all recieve benefits that are not written anywhere, are never discussed or revealed and they eat from the troughs of those rich controlling republican pigs.  So now you are jealous because state employees, and I am especially talking about teachers, haven't suffered enough.  Don't spread the suffereing.  TAX  THE RICH.  THEY SPEND MORE MONEY IN A DAY THAN YOU SPEND IN A YEAR.  TAX THE CRAP OUT OF THEM. 

Not everyone in this "government state employee group" falls into this despised category.  Working at a public school as a support staff, I pay for my health care and life insurance, I pay for parking to come to work, I pay union dues, pay into my retirement, and I have gone for up to three years with zero percent raise while some administrators are given 8% arbitrarily on top of their group raises.  It's appauling to see that those employees making over $150,000 or more will pay in 5% with zero percent raises, while others making $28,000 will take a 5% pay reduction while paying in for their retirement and insurances.  Wake up--they're targeting the wrong people!!

I work for a public school as technology support staff.  We have not had raised or cost of living increase in over 3 years and have been asked to take a voluntary pay cut of 1%.  Now we are paying an addition 3% for health care and now a 5% percent pay cut.  For me that’s a $487 per month pay cut which means I may not be able to pay all my bills and put food on the table for my kids.  Now, I can take a job in the private sector and make at least $5000 more, what’s keeping me, my talent and education working for a Michigan School System.  Nothing!

 Hey You ....who the hell do you think you are wanting to cut my salary loser...we teachers deserve to be paid our salary in full....how you you like it if they pass a new 5% tax on YOUR wages and did you also know we teachers have to pay a 3% health care pretax cut out of your salaries for retirees....so sacrosanct that but head......I hope you lose your job AND your house AND your family!

DumbAss

 If your language in your post is an example of your actions and abilities as a teacher then you don't just deserve a cut in pay - you deserve to be removed as a teacher.  You are a foul-mouth Neanderthal and immature  to boot!

So, Mr. John Pappageorge wants to take only a 5% pay cut while everyone else has taken at least a 15% cut in pay and now their employers want them to give even more concessions. Politicians like you have allowed companies to stop paying us our pensions, and we have been paying a large percentage of our health insurance for quite some time now.

What's worse is that you don't earn the money that you are presently paid. I don't see anything that you are doing for "the people". You are a burden and a waste of taxpayer money. It is people like you who got us into this mess and you should forfeit your pay until we get back on our feet. Another idea is that you get paid by the work you do. I think you would end up owing us.

At least Representative Tim Melton's suggested a 10% cut, which is more than you can come up with. You think that this is going to convince the people that you are sacrificing something. 5% isn't anything compared to what the rest of us have lost. Regardless of what you think of yourself, you are no better than the rest of us. I think you need to be voted out of office.

 Truckingal - We don't have to deal with it. We are already taking pay cuts each year and paying more for medical expenses. It's not fair that the goverment doesn't know how to budget money so they just pick a group of people to take it from! What is your job? I hope they chose YOUR profession to take a paycut next. We have bills to pay and families to feed too.