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Editorials
Recession pay hikes send wrong message : Editorials : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisRecession pay hikes send wrong message
| 11/5/2009
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As we reported last week, several months of negotiations ended when the Oswego School District Board voted unanimously to approve a new basic contract with the Oswego Education Association (OEA), the union that represents the district's 945 teachers, department chairpersons, learning resource center directors, and certified nurses. The contract grants the OEA members a wage hike of 3.8 percent over the next two years.
The new teachers' contract follows the approval of other contracts for unionized local government employees, including a 2.75 percent wage hike granted to Oswego Police Department sergeants, a two percent increase to the Oswego School District bus drivers and 3.75 percent to emergency dispatchers at KenCom in Yorkville.
Attorneys for the Village of Oswego are also currently negotiating a new contract with a union representing the village's patrol officers. An attorney for the village recently told the village board that the union had rejected the village's offer of a 2.75 percent wage hike.
In adopting its current fiscal year budget last spring the village of Montgomery included revenues to cover wage hikes for its unionized employees. That same budget required the elimination of of six non-union employees and a reduction in hours for some other staff members due to a drop in revenues.
As we've said here previously, we don't begrudge salary increases to any workers, either in the private or the public sector if funds are available. We also understand the historic and economic factors that led to the rise of unions in the public sector decades ago. However, given current economic conditions and the significant budget challenges all of our local governmental agencies are facing, we have to scratch our heads and wonder why anyone is getting a raise this year.
As we have reported previously, the Oswego School District administrators agreed last summer to a wage freeze, while non-unionized employees for the Oswegoland Park District and the Villages of Oswego and Montgomery are all continuing to work at last year's pay levels. In some cases, those same employees are now being asked to do more work due to the layoffs of colleagues.
We believe the unions and their members would have sent a much better message to the taxpayers they serve if they had also agreed to wage freezes this year.
We note here the taxpaying public will pay for the wage hikes granted to the unionized government employees. And many of those same taxpayers are now struggling to make ends meet because they've either gone without raises this year, had their hours scaled back or lost their jobs outright.
Next time local government agencies come before voters with a proposal for a tax or fee hike, we expect some taxpayers will ask about the raises the union employees of those agencies received amidst the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
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