As California struggles to stay solvent, it appears an overwhelming majority of voters there have also become fed up with the luxurious benefits afforded unions and have decided they've had enough. According to a bipartisan poll released by the Los Angeles Times, Golden State voters want public union members to give up some of their retirement benefits, favor a cap on pensions and also want public employees to work longer before they can begin collecting them.
Seventy percent of respondents said they supported a cap on pensions for current and future public employees. Nearly as many, 68%, approved of raising the amount of money government workers should be required to contribute to their retirement. Increasing the age at which government employees may collect pensions was favored by 52%.
Of course Governor Brown was comfortably elected with help of public employee unions, so don't expect him to embrace this poll, although he might want to consider the mood of the public nationwide. He can't be oblivious to what has recently occurred in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio, not to mention in the very blue state of New York, where Andrew Cuomo has successfully taken on teacher's unions as his state also faces the fiscal abyss.
One of the pollsters sees the obvious direction of the public sentiment.
"It's pretty clear that there's broad support for making changes in the area of pensions," said Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who co-directed the bipartisan poll for The Times and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Says one voter:
"It's just gotten way out of hand," said Beverly Marcelja, a 67-year old Democrat and retiree living in Tracy, in the Central Valley.
So as the Democrats and their leader Obama constantly declare, it's time for unions memebr to pay their fair share. Everyone's got some skin in the game, right?
"It's one thing for Republican governors in Wisconsin and Indiana to support these types of changes, but seeing this type of support from California voters, even California Democrats, is really remarkable," said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC and a former GOP strategist.
Nationally, Democrats and their media enablers want you to believe some meager concessions from greedy unions is an assault on the rights of workers and Republicans want to return to an era of sweatshop labor. Of course this is nonsense, but the reality is Democrats are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the public unions and without their contributions the defeats they suffered in 2010 will become commonplace. Which explains why the recent union temper tantrum in Wisconsin was largely orchestrated by the White House.
The time has come for unions to enter the 21st century and come to grips with reality. The gravy train has derailed and it's time they realize this. The non-union private sector is sick and tried of paying for their benefits and they're fighting back. Are they going to ignore the will of an overwhelming number of Democrats now as well?
