Saturday, December 19, 2009

No Raises For You!!!

Today the Daily News hammers Uncle Joel Klein for cutting the 4% pay raises that Mayor Bloomberg gave to city managers this year to 2% for NYCDOE educrats.

The News says that, given the current state of city finances and the money Bloomberg ordered schools to cut from their budgets, Klein should have made the raises 0%.

They note that UFT head Michael Mulgrew defended Klein because UFT members are hoping for 4% raises as well, so I'm sure that if teachers get even a 1% increase (and of course that will only come with givebacks to the city on ATR's and tenure), they'll be hammering us too.

I understand that times are very tough, believe me. But I also understand that people deserve salary increases and 2% is not a "huge raise," no matter what Mort Zuckerman or his minions at the Daily News editorial board think.

Over the last 12 months, the consumer price index is up 1.8%, which means people need to pay more for the stuff they need to buy, like food and rent and gas and medicine. A 2% raise, minus the 1.8% increase in prices, leaves DOE educrats with .02% when all is said and done. That's not even a raise, let alone a "huge raise."

And the rationale that city and state finances are bad so no raises for anybody working for either government is jive too.

The Daily News and the Post have been hemorrhaging readers and losing millions of dollars for years now.

The Daily News used to be profitable but has struggled recently while the New York Post has never turned a profit under Rupert Murdoch. Times have been so tough that last year the Post and News talked about combining some business operations to save money (though that never came to pass.)

Yet I never see editorials in either paper decrying the amount of money the journalists at those papers make, or the editors for that matter.

And I bet neither the journalists nor the editors offer to give back salary increases when they get them, despite the shitty financial standing of both papers and newspaper journalism in general.

So while I completely understand the incongruity of DOE educrats getting a raise when principals are being forced to cut their budgets, I also understand that the journalists and editorial staffs at the cash-challenged News and Post are, until they take pay cuts to help their papers survive in these challenging times, full of shit.

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