-By Warner Todd Huston
Officials of Northumberland County, Pennsylvania may be about to indulge some union busting. A proposed strike by American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 86, Local 2016, prompted officials to seek bids from private companies to replace the recalcitrant public employees union members threatening a walkout.
County Chief Commissioner Vinny Clausi is unrepentant about pushing the plan to bust the union.
“If they go on strike, we want to make sure we have service,” he said. “The union will not put the government out of business.”
AFSCME union members recently rejected the County’s contract offer of a three-year contract. Naturally, the reason these greedy union thugs wanted to strike is because the county offered a smaller package rather than all the perks and raises the unionistas wanted.
She said the contract offer was rejected because it only offers employees $1 an hour raises while increasing health insurance costs from $20 a month to $220 a month for family benefits.
In the age of Obama when everyone else is losing jobs by the millions, it is galling that these union toughs want to force the taxpayers to award them ever higher and extravagant benefits and salaries.
I like what Clausi said in reply to the attempted extortion by greedy union “negotiators.”
“The past board of commissioners gave away the kitchen sink to the unions,” Clausi said. “I prefer to lose an election before I give in to them.”
Now, THAT is a county chief I could get behind.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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