In the private sector, failure to maximize every dollar can lead to the company collapsing and hundreds or thousands out of work.

In the PUBLIC sector, failure to maximize every dollar just means you go back to the taxpayers, bend them over, lube them up and TAKE MORE DOLLARS. There is no risk to the individual employee. It's not like government is gonna go out of business so what do they care?

Unfortunately what they aren't yet realizing is that the well is dry, the people are fed up, and the union leadership manages to generate TERRIFIC soundbites for the growing anti-union sentiment.

No non-union person in this state, looking at their growing energy and food bills and wondering how they will get by, is at ALL moved by the whining from the unions. Not one bit. Because everybody knows that a win for the unions will mean yet FEWER dollars in their own pockets to provide for THEIR families.

And that will not stand.

As "King Don" mentioned this morning on the John DePetro show, Massachusetts employees already pay 25% of their health premiums, and the Feds are going from 25% to 30%, which is much more than our RI state employees are being asked to pay, and yet council 94 refuses to consider it. RI state employees need to wake up fast, they've had it too good and it cannot be sustained.

I'm still waiting for the first public employee to quit over this terrible pay package and exhausting 35 hour work week.

"Profit rabid CEO"? And what profit is there for the Governor in balancing the state budget????

She might be a nice lady, she might be quite intelligent from an IQ standpoint, but she is totally clueless about how the real world works.

This is another reason to immediately freeze the pension system and go to a defined contribution system. People go to work for the state / become public school teachers at a young age, and the pension / prevailing culture is that they expect to stay there for life (and do).

This causes the insular and myopic culture, divorced from reality, that we see with government employees.

This also breeds what we tend to see in government (not just in RI) of a bureaucratic culture fixated on inputs rather than results - for many, it's the only dynamic they've ever been exposed to, so it seems normal and acceptable.

As with private sector organizations, some turnover and fresh blood on a regular basis is a very healthy thing. People coming and going between public and private sector employment would by itself bring great improvement to the quality and cost effectiveness of government.

And what will you do when your employer makes you participate in a 401(k) instead of a guranteed defined pension plan?

And what will you do when you're told you won't be able to automatically retire after 20 years?

And what will you do when there is an expectation that you may have to work longer than 40 hours a week on occcassion?

AMAZING!

Is Ms. Knapp so detached from the real world that she fails to understand that those taxpayers subsidizing the public unions are already doing all of these things!?!?!

Does she not realize that she wants people with 401(k)'s to pay for other people's defined benefit plans?

Her comments only further demonstrate that there is an inability (or perhaps unwillingness) on behalf of some unions to understand the experience of people living in the "real world".

I only hope that Ms Knapp and folks of her ilk keep commenting - it will only help to increase the groundswell of support for the Governor in his efforts.

The unions have a parity clause with all the other teat-suckers on the public dime. Too bad there's no parity clause for the unions based on the what workers (productive sector, to borrow a previouly used, and quite accurately, phrase) in the real world receive.

Which begs the question...

If the unions in this state have a parity clause, why do we need to negotiate with all of them? Shouldn't we be able to negotiate with ONE of them, get the agreement ratified and then yell "PARITY! You all get the same thing. Have a nice day."?

It's sickening every time one of these idiots speaks. Does not one of them read the paper, follow current events or watch television? WE don't have anymore money for you A@%*&^$S to have summers off, 35 hour work weeks, free healthcare etc... etc... I have to go to work every day that I want to get paid. I pay for my healthcare. I support my family very well and have never asked anyone out there to help me do it. If I have to hear one more second of them whining that they have to contribute...dare I say it...10% of their co-pay, I'm going to choke someone. FIRE them all and let them see how good they had it.

I don't get it. If these weren't official talks, then what exactly did the rank and file vote on? Was it a memorandum of understanding? A trial balloon? What?

That statement makes no sense.