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Unions and the public sector are a bad mix

In response to the Sunday commentary, “Nevada state workers get a raw deal”: Taxpayer-funded entities have no business having unions. Cops, correction workers, firefighters, teachers and other state, city or county employees work for the taxpayer, and the unions have obfuscated and ensured the membership has exploited contracts. The first thing an employee learns is “how to get around the system” — and it’s easy to do.

No, if you want a civil service job it should be simple: Here’s the requirements up front, here’s the salary up front and as the need arises, those jobs will be reviewed to see if they still fill needs. If so, we’ll review the salary/benefits every four years or so. If not, we’ll see if the employee can make himself useful in another area. But if the need for the job is gone and the person isn’t useful, he or she is still there because? Because of the union?

Don’t give people automatic raises just for showing up. I have seen the detrimental effects of this. The public has no idea how civil servants play the system.

And then you have civil servants who don’t work on the jobs they were hired for, but instead get paid by the public entity while working for the union. Anyone have a problem with that? You should.

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