Get It In Writing, Boys.

Always get it in writing.


Da Mare shown here "negotiating" the unions

into a shiny, used Centurion.


If you were wondering why the Evil Chicago City Unions were kicking up such a stink last month over getting some kind of guarantees in exchange for deep cuts and concessions to help Da Mare balance his 2009 budget (From the Sun Times)...

Mayor Daley warns hold-out unions : cut deal or members will be laid off

July 7, 2009

BY FRAN SPIELMAN

Mayor Daley today warned three hold-out unions -- Teamsters 726, Laborers 1001 and AFSCME Council 31 -- that layoffs would be confined to their 650 members if they refuse to cut a deal on cost-cutting concessions by July 15.

"We have agreements with everyone else except those three. They have to come to the table. We're not trying to tell people, 'You're getting laid off.' But on July 15, they will be laid off," the mayor said.

"We have sent the notices. I've sent a letter to all the families pointing this out. Don't blame me. Of course they blame Mayor Daley for everything. But, don't blame me. You have to talk to your union leaders. If they think unemployment is better than people working, that's their position."

Daley's warning did not scare Henry Bayer, executive director of AFSCME Council 31.

"I know he bulldozed Meigs Field. But he can't bulldoze city employees and their unions. He has to sit down and negotiate in good faith. The city hasn't been willing to do that. It's their way or the highway,'" Bayer said.
...

...this from the Tribune might help clarify things:

Chicago official predicts even worse budget problems in 2010
Chief Financial Officer Gene Saffold says higher property taxes are 'last resort'

By Hal Dardick
Tribune reporter
July 31, 2009

Mayor Richard Daley's administration Thursday predicted a gaping hole in next year's budget that will eclipse the current financial problems -- even after the city exhausts its brand-new $320 million rainy day fund.

The anticipated $6.2 billion budget for next year could be more than half a billion dollars in the red because of plummeting tax collections and rising wages that account for more than 80 percent of the city's day-to-day spending, said Chief Financial Officer Gene Saffold. He announced the gloomy prediction as Daley aides began briefing aldermen in anticipation of public hearings next month.

Although higher taxes are "a last resort . . . nothing is ruled out at this point," Saffold said. "The mayor has instructed us not to look at property taxes as we move forward in 2010."

Daley has laid off city workers and pressured unions to take unpaid days off to save money this year, and aldermen and outside budget experts predicted that personnel cuts were likely next year. The biggest chunk of increased spending next year will come from $117 million in higher wages, benefits and pension fund payments, Saffold said.

"You have to look at personnel and personnel reductions because they represent 80 to 85 percent of the operating costs," said Laurence Msall, executive director of the Civic Federation.

...

Bwahaha!

In short, Da Mare’s people knew -- and had known for months -- that the hammer was gonna fall much harder next year than this, but had no intention whatsoever of dropping the 2010 Budget Bombshell until after they had firmly establish the precedent in 2009 that they can extort huge concessions from the city’s unions in exchange for...nothing.

Because the chief virtue of a union is not their cool hats or jaunty labor chanties, or that they call everybody "brother" and "sister": the chief and only virtue of a union is that it can use its collective bargaining power to force the employer to sign a fucking contract. An enforceable, legal instrument.

Now when the place is on fire, everybody needs to pitch in, which means everybody's gonna take a haircut.

I get that.

The problem is, it's bullshit.

How can you tell?

Because if you track Da Mare's happy horseshit about “shared sacrifice” in these parlous times, you start to notice that it all begins and ends with the act of tearing up those awful, expensive contracts with Labor that dance in Da Mare’s head like visions of sugarplums. As if being paid an honest dollar for an honest day's work were something vaguely dirty and disloyal when it is paid out of the public coffers.

Ah, but the minute someone suggests tearing up a rancid, taxpayer-screwing contract with one of Da Mare’s private sector pals? (from The Reader [emphasis added])

By now you know the parking meter lease deal was bad for you. Here’s who it was good for.

...
Gripping the podium like it was [city inspector general David] Hoffman’s neck, Daley informed the City Hall press corps that he and his administration, including chief of staff Paul Volpe, would never, ever enter into a contract that wasn’t great for the city. “My chief of staff detailed—detailed!—why we think this is a very, very responsible agreement,” Daley said. “As mayor it is my job to be responsible.”

When reporters asked about Hoffman’s suggestion—endorsed by a growing number of aldermen—that any future sale of a public asset be subjected to “independent analysis” before being finalized, Daley snapped that the city had commissioned outside experts to do just that, most notably the Chicago-based investment firm William Blair & Company. “This agreement had the best professional people with regard to this agreement,” he said.

When asked why that company had been selected, as opposed to any of the dozens of other investment firms around the country, Daley became indignant: “Those are good people!”

This testy exchange with reporters turned the spotlight, if only for an instant, on one element of the parking meter agreement that’s so far received very little attention: the battery of well-connected, highly paid financial and legal consultants who executed the deal on the city’s behalf—and who are immune from the regulations that govern most contractors doing business with the city.
…

Got that?

Private sector contract = inviolable holy writ.
Public sector contract = inconvenient scrap of toilet paper stuck to Da Mare's heel.

All of which stems from Da Mare’s lifelong worship of Rich People in the Private Sector; a fixation uncontaminated by any actual experience working anywhere but for the Evil Gummint his entire adult. It is a fetish that runs so deep and constant that when I hear Da Mare waxing as rhapsodic as a character out of “Atlas Shrugged” about the magic of the marketplace, it puts me in mind of some arrested-development case who has read nothing but Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Mars" pulp novels his whole life and who now leaps obsessively into every conversation regardless of the subject to hold aggressively forth on how much we could all learn from the noble wisdom of John Carter, the warrior spirit of Tar Tarkas and the ancient and magical world of Barsoom.

Astonishing as it may seem, Da Mare of Da City A Chicago cannot seem to wrap his head around is the simple fact that most people come to public service for entirely different reasons than they go into, say, banking; they come to work for the benefit of the commonweal, and have traditionally been willing to forgo the five-to-six-figure bonuses their long hours and expertise would yield in the private sector, in exchange for greater long-term stability, and the ability to work reasonable hours.

But because Da Mare really does not seem capable of grasping this fundamental fact about the motives of public servants -- and because all he knows of the private sector comes to him filtered through the monetized ids of transportation moguls and real estate magnates -- he ends up sincerely believing that it is perfectly reasonable to demand the fierce, toil-til-you-drop-in-the-traces work ethic of hedge fund managers...but at cheap, public-sector prices, and with the understanding that his worker ants will all be obedient, little, let’s-all-tighten-our-belts team players when the going gets tough.

But of course that isn’t the mentality that drives the private sector at all, is it? (From CBSNews)

Wall Street's Bonus Babies

Posted by Charles Cooper
If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I could think of a lot worse fates than to return as one of the nearly 5,000 bankers and traders who belonged to Wall Street's millionaire club in 2008, a year, coincidentally, in which the United States' financial system came apart at the seams.

On Thursday, the New York attorney general’s office issued a detailed accounting of Wall Street's bonus culture. If you have time, take a look. It makes for an intriguing read. But aside from the report's charts and statistics, the conclusion reconfirms the widely-held suspicion that investment bankers are from Mars, while the rest of us inhabit an entirely separate universe.

For instance, the study found that the nation's big investment banks continued to lavish royal monetary packages on employees with scant regard for the corporate bottom line. When they profited, so did their employees. When they did poorly, employees were still paid handsomely. "And when the banks did very poorly, they were bailed out by taxpayers and their employees were still paid well," according to Andrew M. Cuomo, New York's attorney general. "Bonuses and overall compensation did not vary significantly as profits diminished."
…

What never gets mentioned in any of Da Mare's sermons on the Magic of Capitalism is that in the public sector it doesn't matter how many extra evenings, weekends and holidays you pour into your j-o-b; unless you have a detailed agreement in writing, you are never going to see a decent raise, much less a bonus. Your performance will never be commensurate with your effort. The city will never issue stock, so you will never have a chance to earn an equity stake in the good government you are helping to create. And because your time is paid for by tax dollars and allocated on the basis of need (tempered heavily by an unholy amount of backroom dealing and political compromise), unless you sling traffic tickets on commission, the fruits of your labor will never have any relationship to your organization's revenues.

The dirty, bottom-line of life of the workaday world inside the high, opaque walls of city gummint is just this simple: unless you have an agreement in writing that you are willing to go to the limit to defend -- just like the banksters and parking meter grifters do -- you’re gonna get fucked.

‘Cause dats how dey do it in da private sector!