cinepro wrote:EAllusion wrote:Those pay raises in that industry are considered automatic with their normally negotiated contract. By giving them up, they've have conceded that amount of money. Your example doesn't hold because they aren't conceding some pretend amount of money they were never going to get anyway. They are conceding something they would normally bargain for and get in a way that will cause some financial pain. It's perfectly fine to call that a savings. My company has held salary increases for managers at bay for 3 years. We call that an efficiency, which is corporate-speak for a cost-savings.
That's all well and good, but I strongly suspect the wording is chosen to make people think there has been some sort of actual cutting (of salaries or the number of workers, or both), when in fact that isn't the case. I don't care if a future raise was carved in stone and sealed with blood, foregoing such a raise isn't a "cut". I suspect if unions and politicians keep playing semantic games, it will only increase antipathy from the general public and hasten their demise.
And the example does hold, because, as the unions are apparently finding out, their expected salary increases were a pretend amount of money that they were never going to get anyway. They just didn't know it at the time.
Pishaw. As much as republicans may hope otherwise, unions aren't going to die. Just ask Scott Walker.
And most working people do understand that accepting a pay freeze is a sacrifice, and can rightly be viewed as "contributing."
Time to quote Dwight Eisenhower:
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presi ... s/1147.cfm