-By Warner Todd Huston
A few weeks ago several British civil service unions launched a two-day strike over cuts in severance pay that the government authorized for workers that were let go because of reductions in the government work force (called a “redundancy cut”).
The cap in “redundancy pay,” said British government unions, could see workers losing a third of their “entitlement.”
Government officials said that the new pay scheme could save the government £500 million. Starting in April “anyone earning £30,000 or less will be entitled to a maximum of three years’ pay or £60,000, whichever is lower.”
Cabinet Office minister Tessa Jowell told the BBC that this new severance pay scheme put government workers in line with the private sector.
So, what does this have to do with the U.S.? Layoffs of government workers are increasing and at some point more union members will be targeted to be “redundancied” out here in the U.S., just like they have in Britain.
Expect this sort of unrest to begin to rear its ugly head as city, county and state governments begin to look to more layoffs to balance their wildly over spent budgets and look to unions to threaten every manner of retaliation.
In fact, as we noted here on April 3, unions are already in thug mode warning Democrats that if they don’t kowtow to union’s demands that they will target Democrats for destruction at the polls by using their giant buckets of money gleaned from dues paying members.
As state governments all across the country come to crunch time, expect unions to really amp up the whining like they recently did in Britain.
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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, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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