Report Inappropriate Comments

Dave here is my answer that I wrote in an 2011 Projo op-ed to your claim that the union leaders our not responsible for the current conditions . I will repeat it for the sake of others to read:

Organized labor now is laying the blame for the condition of the pension plan on past and present political leaders. What union leaders don’t say is that they endorsed and supported most of these politicians in exchange for their passing laws that defined current pension benefits.

To make matters worse, labor also supported scheme after scheme by politicians that let employees manipulate the system: allowing enhanced benefits through the purchase of pension credits, enabling questionable disability pensions, receiving retirement benefits after only 20 years of work. Granting lifetime health-care benefits and unrealistic compounded cost-of-living adjustments only escalated today’s problems.

Yet Rhode Island’s labor leaders have never accepted responsibility for their failure to monitor the health of the system. And by brainwashing public-sector employees into believing the system was infallible, they also ignored any problems. It was only a matter of time before the system’s faulty structure was exposed.

Now labor leaders won’t accept reform because it exposes their culpability. So, instead, they point fingers and resort to the despicable tactic of personally attacking those for trying to fix it.

Labor bosses have seen the warning signs for decades. But, instead of being partners in acknowledging the problem, identifying corrupt costly policies and proposing solutions to fix them, they and their ethically conflicted political supporters put some caulking in the leaks, slapped on a fresh coat of paint and masked the rotting structural problems for decades more.

It was bad enough that the state and its cities and towns have, for years, been redirecting budgetary resources from all other programs in an attempt to stabilize the system. The fact is, current state and local employees are now paying the price with sub-par equipment and staffing, and, along with taxpayers, paying for retirement benefits for former employees that they themselves will never realize.

Organized labor leaders bear much of the responsibility for these conditions.

We need not hesitate to fairly criticize, and justly tarnish, the reputation of labor leaders. These union bosses still pretend to have been the guardians of the public-employee pension system. The truth is that they are ultimately responsible for its failure.

The real “scam” and “lies” perpetrated upon all Rhode Island citizens are the promises of unsustainable benefits by the union bosses.

From: With no co-pay, retiree health costs top $7.2 million

Please explain the inappropriate content below.