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Wax Dynasty posted:Also, redscare is right about the police and prison guard unions. They really are too powerful, and their influence can be felt in many things from the overcrowded prisons to three strikes laws to increased funding for cops which usually goes towards militarization and larger SWAT teams. Also the incredible pension deals they get squeeze out most other funding and act as a sort of hidden austerity program for other parts of the budget like infrastructure, education and health. Hey let's not forget about the absolute invincibility of the prison system meaning that we are currently in direct defiance of a court order from SCOTUS like a modern day segregation era south. e: Brown v. Plata 2011
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Jun 28, 2013 17:03
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Yep it's them drat public employee unions. Because CTA and SEIU don't have basically zero influence in Sacramento, don't get paid bupkis and hosed on every contract and don't cover an order of magnitude more state employees than CCPOA does or anything.
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Jun 28, 2013 18:06
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Arsenic Lupin posted:We're in a motherloving drought. 2013 is the driest year on record. It's a really good book, anybody with any interest in water rights in California (and if you don't have any interest in it but are posting in this thread you should, there really isn't anything more entertaining, or horrifying, in CA politics) ought to read it.
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Jun 28, 2013 18:15
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Obdicut posted:and they have pretty good relationships with other unions. Whoa whoa whoa, no the CCPOA does not. When the state put everybody on furloughs for three years the CCPOA got off scot-free and didn't even complain in solidarity. When the state laid off shitloads of people they didn't get touched, or raise one word in defense of the other unions. There's the CCPOA and then there's everybody else and nary the two groups of unions will cross.
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Jun 29, 2013 17:18
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FRINGE posted:The only solution at hand is to start releasing people. Hes a politician. Not likely to happen. This is exactly what the SCOTUS ordered that he do in 2011. Let's be clear here this is not business as usual; politicians have done unpopular things when required to by law before, his current defiance is in fact exceptionally assholish even for a governor.
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Jun 29, 2013 22:38
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Forgive me for sounding naive, but it seems to me like part of the solution would be to unionize the prison population. No way in hell to do that with guards encouraging ethnic violence, though. This is basically what happened in the 60s and 70s; the Attica Riot/Uprising was pretty similar to the big union strikes of the early 20th century in that it was a bunch of laborers using a marginal level of violence (one guard was fatally injured by the inmates, another nine would be shot by the military when they attacked) to protest for better conditions. It was held with solidarity between the races and it ended the same way as the big strikes: the national guard was sent in with guns. In order to stop that sort of thing from happening again it became an unofficial policy (hell maybe it was official at the time, but at least today it isn't in the DOM) to encourage racial division amongst inmate populations through selective enforcement and thus were born the modern prison gangs.
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Jul 1, 2013 07:42
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Gatts posted:Is it just me, but does something like this not sound like slavery? Don't prisoners also do some kind of work as well for no cost/low cost? Especially in areas with (I don't have a source, just anecdotal info) higher rates of incarceration or stricter sentencing for African Americans...I don't know how or why it's possible. It is slavery because slavery is perfectly legal if they committed a crime, which is why the hugely black inmate population of Angola picks cotton for the white administration with nary a peep of protest. quote:Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Don't worry, while we don't have cotton to pick in California Prison Industry Authority has plenty of profitable projects to use our inmates on 
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Jul 1, 2013 15:29
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Gatts posted:So we basically have slavery, prisoners convicted of a crime, and a legal statement (I'm assuming that's what that is) allowing it, in 2013. In America, bastion of FREEDOM. I think my mind is blown at this realization. That's (part of) the text of the 13th Amendment: the one that banned slavery. Except for where it didn't.
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Jul 1, 2013 16:42
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coolskillrex remix posted:All this being said I do think unions for public sector tend to abuse their position, which is "BART will just bend backwards because at the end of the day its government money/debt" As a public employee in California who took pay cuts for three years because of the budget crises and has never actually seen a raise I suggest you stop basing your opinions on absolutely nothing/poo poo pulled out of your rear end. e: "These evil unions are destroying our city" is the news response to literally every transit strike ever so why does anybody wonder why city governments keep refusing to negotiate in good faith when they know a strike will improve their bargaining position? The solution back in the day was no-fare strikes where the union would keep everything running and just not charge, but that poo poo was made illegal because it meant the PR was on the union's side and we can't allow that. atelier morgan fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Jul 2, 2013 |
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Jul 2, 2013 00:45
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coolskillrex remix posted:So are you in a union or no? SEIU Local 1000, state employee out of Sacramento. If it's local employees you're talking about then they may not have taken cuts and if they were CCPOA they got off without a scratch but I can assure you any state employees in San Jose covered by SEIU bargaining units (which is most of them) took pay cuts from 2010-2012 because those agreements were statewide. Your local union for the public sector may have abused its position, and the CCPOA sure as hell does, but you don't have a foot to stand on trying to say an amorphous 'unions for the public sector' did.
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Jul 2, 2013 01:51
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Nuclearmonkee posted:Yeah I was a public employee in the North Bay and anyone who thinks they get gold plated retirements and annual COLAs are delusional. I left after a 10% pay cut, followed by a 10% furlough and an increase in employee retirement/health care contributions. CA state/local government have been in a horrible death spiral for a long time that has only recently started to abate. I've worked for the state for 5 years, I have not seen a single COLA and it is only in this month that the pay cuts are abating and I'll finally be back to making as much as I did three years ago. If the current contract negotiations succeed then I'll finally see a 5% raise in July 2014. poo poo has been bad.
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Jul 2, 2013 02:19
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Nuclearmonkee posted:If I were a transit union leader, I would totally do a fare strike and let the government take you to court over it. Shutting down the system only fucks you over and makes everyone hate you. This is why fare strikes are illegal. Not 'take you to court over it' illegal; drivers getting pulled off their busses and into police cars illegal.
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Jul 3, 2013 17:21
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Nuclearmonkee posted:I'd be cool with getting arrested for driving a bus/train during a fare strike. Pretty sure the passengers would be more pissed at the cops/BART than with the poor bastard who's just trying to negotiate for a better wage/safer working conditions. They going to go fill up the jails with disgruntled transit workers? It's drat risky, both to the individual worker and to the continued existence of the union itself, to organize illegal activity. Which isn't to say it's never the right answer, just that the stakes here don't seem anywhere near high enough to justify the risk.
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Jul 3, 2013 17:33
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Shear Modulus posted:I live in Berkeley and basically everyone I know is blaming everything on those greedy union thugs. The only person I've talked to who considered that the workers might have grievances is this old hippy dude who struck up a conversation with me on the bus. Bastion of leftism this ain't. NIMBY liberalism at it's finest.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:41
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Muck and Mire posted:I've only heard "Well, I mean, they have the right to strike and all, but don't you think that's a lot of money for sitting in a toll booth?" and not much in support of the strikers at all. That's why management provided false information on prevailing wages. But saying that an intentional deception is false would be taking a side and violating journalistic integrity!
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Jul 3, 2013 19:23
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If it becomes 'common sense' that strikes don't work Management has an incentive to negotiate in bad faith because the Union doesn't have the option of a strike, thus it becomes more likely that the Union will need to actually strike to achieve an equitable contract, since threatening it is ineffectual. Which is to say that Management believing this: Kyrie eleison posted:Unions are out of touch and out of date. Their strike is making a fool out of them in front of everyone. They think they can get the public to side with them by pissing them off. It will destroy their credibility forever Is exactly why there's a BART strike on.
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Jul 3, 2013 23:00
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The rent on a studio apartment in SF is only slightly less than my entire take home pay working for the state (meaning wages are set statewide with no consideration for cost of living). Guess the only place where there are job openings for my classification? 
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Jul 19, 2013 04:00
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Dusseldorf posted:I looked up the numbers and Pelican Bay State Prison employs about 5% of Del Norte county. Inmates can't vote but still count as population for the purposes of drawing electoral lines, so just count them all as free republican votes.
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Aug 8, 2013 22:32
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sincx posted:Apparently there's been musing about legislation that will require transit labor disputes to be submitted for mandatory arbitration. I suppose that sounds nicer when told to some empty-headed reporter than 'outlawing transit unions' does.
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Oct 18, 2013 16:44
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Captain Frigate posted:Honestly this mentality is terrible. Why not require people actually operating the huge metal shell rocketing around at high (relative) speed to be responsible because there could always be someone on the track. It can work both ways and there's no reason to place the responsibility entirely on the victims, There's plenty of reason for somebody to place responsibility on the victims. If the victims are responsible then you can oppose the strike because obviously everything is safe and fine and can those overpaid fatcat union workers just stop caring about their working conditions and drive my rear end to work already?!
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Oct 21, 2013 23:18
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redscare posted:Get your union to allow me and anyone else in the state who wants to buy into CalPERS and basically fund my own pension (and help fund everyone else's) and then I'll change my tune. The way I see it, public employees in CA can either help make things better for everyone else or they'll get jobbed out when the hammer falls because as it stands, public workers get an easy ride on the back of taxpayers who could never even dream of getting those benefits in this day and age. Crab mentality gently caress the unions rhetoric aside as a state employee vested in CalPERS I am 100% down with opening CalPERS investment up to everyone in the state. It'd need a bunch of new regulation to make it work (mandated employer contributions? ) but it'd be better for everyone so let's do that.
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Oct 24, 2013 20:19
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Pook Good Mook posted:I'm so sick to death of the idiot farmers in this state doing the work for the agribusiness companies that own them by falling for their bullshit hook line and sinker. 'The farmers' are almost entirely a double handful of fantastically wealthy oligarchs who bought half the state back in the bad old days. They're not idiots, they are the agribusiness companies.
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Jan 18, 2014 00:59
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Illuminado posted:I meant like the hamlets you'd run into in rural NorCal. Having gone to school with enough folks from Williams, Maxwell, Los Molinos, basically the towns of <2k, I can say that it's pretty loving boring. Also, Davis is ok, but you have to go to Sacto for the cool stuff. Sacramento and cool stuff don't belong in the same sentence.
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Apr 10, 2014 22:51
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