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Comment by jamiequint | Hacker News Reader

Unions (aka parasites) have a rich history of running their hosts into the ground. Just look at Detroit pensions, or any of the hundreds of municipalities that got fucked by Police/Fire pensions in the subprime crisis (e.g. Vallejo), or the fact that there are bus/train drivers in SF that make $100k+/year. Unions are responsible for running things into the ground far more often than management is. (or they just create the conditions for it then blame management of course)

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Who are you going to persuade with rhetoric like that? I don't even disagree with the point you're making about public-sector unions, which I too have misgivings about, but I feel repulsed by the way you've chosen to make that point --- which has little to do with what I'm saying.

It’s a good thing I’m talking to random people on the internet and not doing union negotiations.

> or the fact that there are bus/train drivers in SF that make $100k+/year.

This is only maybe true in the sense that there probably are some senior-level transit operators who make that much, but the median BART train operator gets $30.58/hr. SF MTA bus drivers are somewhere around $23/hr.

That hardly seems excessive or crazy to me.

That BART figure ignores very generous benefits[0]. I'd like to see your source for calling that the "median" wage (as opposed to the starting wage).

Santa Clara County VTA benefits are even more generous. "Just down the road, Amalgamated Transit Union employees of the Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority pay a flat $35 a month for health care and nothing toward their pension."[0]

[0] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-workers-pay-plus-...

What you're describing is the fault of those managing the pensions, specifically that they continually underfunded them while expecting unrealistically high returns.

Detroit? You mean when the city that was in bankruptcy due to a multitude of reasons (decades of mismanagement at both the local and state level, decline of auto sector, white flight, etc.)[0], and the "parasites" as you call them that agreed to a cut in their benefits that was pivotal to the bankruptcy going through?[1] I'd say that example (along with your language) makes it clear there's more ideology than fact involved in your argument...

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Detroit#Contributor... [1]http://michiganradio.org/post/detroit-bankruptcy-lesson-unde...

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