Some day union will be listed as a synonym for innumerate.
Forest Lake, MN has been negotiating with their unionized 23 officer police force to renew their contract.
The union has refused the contract, so Forest Lake has disbanded the police force and is contracting with Washington County, MN for their law enforcement needs.
For an annual savings of $385,000. Since the city will be paying the county $2.9 million a year for law enforcement... That means they had been spending just shy of $3.3 million a year for 23 employees.
More than $140k per employee including infrastructures.
Digging a bit more we find that the average salary for Forest Lake's cop-shop is $87,500. 2/3 of the police budget is salaries.
What's more is the average salary of a cop nationally is a mere $48,953 and Minnesota has a cost of living value a mere 1.1% more than the national average, so $49,491 is what you'd pay them to match the value with the average.
Another way to look at it is they're being paid 176.8% the national average after accounting for Minnesota's costs of living.
This sort of thing is a recurring "feature" of union labor. More money, less work, fewer responsibilities more protection from consequences of poor performance.
The only thing that's new recently is places willing the shutter the place up.
You might notice that the Forest Lake City Council is still employed. I'm also willing to bet that that 3 Councilors who voted to close the cop-shop have the support of the voters, if not the audience at the meeting, and were voted in precisely to get the gorram'd budget under control.
Public unions keep forgetting they have a customer. The tax-paying voters.
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also Unions are poisonous to the very employees you WANT in the job.
ReplyDeleteIf you are a hard worker and take pride in the products of your labor, and you see a slacker with neither pride, nor shame, who's workplace goals are "don't get fired today" get all the rewards and benefits you do, how long will you work at that level?
Most will either quit or become so Jaded and cynical that they will no longer do the job, just do what it takes to not be removed from the payroll.
It breeds exactly what you don't want....and it's expensive.
The problem with public-sector unions, and the reason that anti-labor management-huggers like Samuel Gompers and FDR opposed them, is simply that a public-sector union lacks the necessary balancing factor of the "greedy capitalist" to keep its demands within reason. Since many public-sector unions are very diligent about getting their people out to vote and working as volunteers in elections, the politicians have a good cogent reason to let them have whatever they want.
ReplyDelete