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This article fails to make the point as to why this is a problem. You might as well make an article "Why Google is in trouble - 60,000 employees earned $150k+".
by freeone3000 6y ago
This article fails to make the point as to why this is a problem. You might as well make an article "Why Google is in trouble - 60,000 employees earned $150k+".
- mc32 6y agoNot really. Google isn’t saddled with retirement entitlements. Also Googles employees generate some of the highest revenues per staff in the industry. SF gets its revenues from its citizens via taxes. The employees don’t produce revenues themselves. They are cost centers. Cities by their nature, use regulatory capture to extract revenues. If googles revenues go down they cut staff. Cities rarely cut staff in line with budget decreases.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kneel 6y agoCorporate welfare is a problem. Why do cities offer tax benefits to these companies at the expense of their own residents? Ironic that SF is going broke with some of the richest companies ever residing here.
- mc32 6y agoAnd it will get worse for cities trying to milk the system if more firms opt for remote work. They should pay a fair share but also cities should not see cos as their cash cow.
- content_sesh 6y ago"Retirement entitlements"? You mean the pensions people have earned, with their labor? It's not a surprise, to anyone who thinks about it for more than 20 seconds that RN or firefighter is not, in fact, a revenue generating position for the city. But they're generally agreed to be necessary, so why should they not be paid a living wage?
- emsy 6y agoSome might say they're... entitled to them.
- mc32 6y agoNo issues with common sense retirements —but some of these are 90% of pre-retirement salaries where people “retire” take their entitlements and work elsewhere after retirement making good money on top of their retirement.
- freeone3000 6y agoOkay, so what?
- mc32 6y agoI want service out of my money that contributes to that pension. Make it 30 or 40 years like everyone else has to work.
- shaftway 6y agoI know a couple firefighters in the bay area and they definitely game this system. They'll work a typical salaried position for ~30 years, and then in their last year (or last couple years) they'll stuff as much overtime as they possibly can in, sometimes more than triple their regular salary. Pension is based on wages over the last year or two, so their pension payments skyrocket upwards. Managers know and are complicit in this, in solidarity with their coworkers. There's often peer pressure too; lower ranked staff are urged to not even request overtime so that it can all go to the near-retirees without a paper-trail of favoritism. It's not uncommon for >98% of overtime to go to the 2 or 3 people who are close to retirement. I'm all for a living wage for people in critical or permanent roles, but this is not that, and it's not fair. This is the opposite, driving pay down for newer recruits (because they can't request overtime), driving retirement benefits up (far above what was earned during the career), and costing the public in the process.
- diebeforei485 6y agoIf public sector employees want private sector wages, they shouldn't also get pensions. They can save for retirement in a 401(k) or equivalent.