Union abuses are costing taxpayer's plenty

The taxpayers need to be outraged. From Neal Boortz:

THE UNIONS ARE OUTRAGED?

Yesterday I told you about the unionized New York City bus drivers who took an average of two months paid leave in order to recover from being "assaulted" by spit. Turns out that someone in New York is actually trying to do something about these abuses. That person would be MTA Chairman Jay Walder, and boy does he have the unions spitting nails. They are actually MAD that they are being called out for not doing their job.

The bus driver assault story is pretty outrageous. But unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Here are some other examples from the New York Post of some of the outrageous union practices in New York City.

• Overtime kicks in by eight-hour day rather than 40-hour week. So employees earn full pay while working less by calling out sick and then making up the lost wages through (premium) overtime.
  
  
• Many bus drivers clock a 12-hour shift for driving four hours in the morning rush and four in the evening rush. For the four hours in between, they're paid for being available -- but with no work to do.
  
  
• Whenever crew members of the Long Island Rail Road are switched from one train to another, they get another day's full pay.
  
  
• Real-time bus arrival information is finally being tested on Manhattan's 34th Street -- more than a decade after technology had made it possible. Union drivers didn't want to be tracked, so union bus mechanics refused to service wheels with the rotation-counting device needed to supplement GPS in its early days.
  
  
• While the new system on the Canarsie line can run trains with no crew aboard, L trains still operate with crews of two -- thanks to union work rules.
  
  
• The union representing crane operators insists on having full-time "oilers" at construction sites every day. But unlike the steam-driven equipment of old, modern cranes don't need constant lubrication.
  
  
• On building sites across the city, union operators must staff elevators -- even when they have normal push-buttons for each floor.
  
  
• Told it would cost $1,000 to have a union electrician plug a laptop into the wall of a Midtown hotel, one smart customer ran out and bought a spare battery for $70 instead -- and then noted it would be cheaper to buy a whole new computer than to pay the hotel electrician.
  
  
• A Midtown hotel just lost out on hosting the Sidney Hillman Foundation awards dinner after its unionized workers said they'd refuse to serve the foundation president -- because he also heads up a rival union.

Sort of makes you wonder how much money we could save on government if government employee unions were made illegal.

Bold emphasis mine. It's a good question. If the unions are going to destroy the taxpayers who pay them, I say destroy the parasitical unions. It's self-defense.


Also see:

Another perfect example of how unionized government employees are dragging us all down

Why Greece is in trouble. And a warning for us.

The cure for Greece is the one for US too