Coming soon to government employees

May 28th, 2009 at 09:01am Linda Grist Cunningham

If I’d been asked to place a bet five years ago that United Auto Workers members would take it in the shorts on everything from benefits to wages, the answer would have been no-brainer: not a chance.

Maybe not even a year ago, although by October 2008, the bet would have been a little less risky. One day before Chrysler gave it up to bankruptcy, about eight of 10 union workers swallowed hard and tossed in the towel to do what they could to save their jobs and the car-making company that is one of the Rock River Valley’s most visible manufacturing linchpins.

General Motors likely will join that bankruptcy sandbox later this week. Its unions will take the same sick-making cuts as did Chrysler.

The UAW, like the United Mine Workers and the United Steel Workers back in the “old days,” is the very model of making certain workers get Class A compensation, benefits, pensions and long-term care and comfort. The work they do is mind-numbing, but if one can stand on one’s feet for eight hours a day and transcend the boredom, the paycheck-cum-benefits was considered a worthy trade off.

Today, the auto union membership has one choice: a job or no job. To keep the job, the nifty compensation package goes away.

Non-union — public and private — workers were first into the global meltdown. For us, defined benefit pension plans disappeared a decade ago. We’ve lived with wage freezes and pay cuts for at least two years. Bonuses ditto. Benefits costs increases ditto. Freezes in 401k matches ditto. Buyouts and layoffs ditto. Furloughs (or fur-cations as some are calling them) ditto.

Now the private sector union workers have headed into the meltdown. What happened at Chrysler will ripple through all the formerly powerful, private sector unions.

And, up next? The public sector unions and employees. That’s government from clerks to cops, from legislators to judges, from teachers to fire fighters.

The only questions are how soon, how deep and how done. No one could have imagined a decade ago that the private sector unions would give it up. They did. The public sector is next.

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