A Culture of Exploitation (You Are Working for Free)

If working for "free" for three days enables one to make $75,000 a year in salary and benefits, then that's a very good return on their efforts.

These union/government workers need to look at the total return and value added to their communities, and not just be concerned about getting something for nothing, and ensuring that their members become "good for nothings" who will not do anything worthwhile for their community unless they can extort maximum payoffs upfront for doing as little as possible, or nothing if they can get away with it.

The unions exist to create value of their workers, and not to create the perceptions that their workers are "worthless" without their protection and bullying.

Actually, $75,000 a year is the average -- for all government workers -- and that's what the present crisis is all about, because that is twice the median for everybody -- while they claim to be the victims of poverty, and in some cases, victimizing the poor for their own benefit (jobs) -- rather than the original beneficiaries of those intended well-meaning programs.

The case in point is that the welfare workers demand the money be paid to them, so very little is left for actually funding welfare and human services benefits -- because the government (union) workers intercept those monies for their own benefit.

That is particularly true of the schools and education, in which the monies go to pay salaries and benefits of teachers rather than actually being expended on classroom instruction and the students. And so, while the number of students stay the same and their achievement stagnates, teachers and education administrators double -- and then claim they are working for "free."

Even the lowest government compensation (salary and benefits) BEGIN above the median for everybody -- which means that all government workers are in the upper half to begin, and so obviously, most people are actually below them, with a tiny few above -- that their unions like to compare as their private sector "peers," when in fact most people get far less, but a tiny few get many times more -- for market reasons, ie., not everybody creates a Microsoft or Apple equally, and gains the windfall.

In fact, most inventors and creative people, do work for free, or for much less, in order to compete for the big payoffs -- which is mainly, doing what they really love to do -- instead of resenting and blaming their work from holding them back from riches they think they would get in a free market for their services.

In the case of schoolteachers, there is no market for their services other than what the government forces people to subsidize. Real teachers often work for free, and enjoy doing so -- because that's what they are -- all the time, inherently.

The greatest thing the unions could do is pay everybody equally for doing the same job, but as it is, those with the greatest seniority get twice the pay for doing half as much.

And then those not teaching at all, but become "educational administrators," of which they are hundreds of them in Hawaii making hundred thousand dollar salaries, are getting more than their fair share of the money that should be used for learning.

Think about it, is teaching easier for the teacher fresh out of college or one who has done the same job for 20 years? But not only do those with seniority get the easiest jobs because they're allowed to choose them, but the new worker gets the worst job -- and lowest pay, and so the exploitation now, is not from the management, but from their own coworkers, who prefer it that way so they can point out how lousy the beginning salaries are in their field.

Who do you think is taking more than their fair share? Where do you think the rest of your money goes?