Dubai Debt Issues Push Stocks Down
GMA: Adam Lambert, No; Chris Brown, Yes
Report: Wife Scratched Tiger Woods' Face, Chased His SUV; Update: Police Unable To Interview Couple Today
Family Gets Early Christmas Gift From Ellen DeGeneres
Street Artist Proposes on Subway Signage
A nice followup to that online database that allows you to look up the base salary of city employees: City employee pay and benefits have risen 63% in the past 8 years, according to the Citizens Budget Commission. Check out the chart above—you'll see that pay has gone up an average of 33%, while health insurance has gone up almost 100%. In private industry, between 2000 and 2008, salary + benefit compensation has only increased by 31% (salaries by 32%, other benefits by 40%).
The Post points out these are "just averages...Firefighters, whose contracts call for built-in overtime and 20-year retirements, 'cost' an average of $186,464 each. Cops, with similarly generous benefits, came in at $164,045. Teachers and other instructional personnel averaged $98,505. The remaining civilian workers brought up the rear at $83,279." The CBC's Carol Kellerman tells the NY Times, “These skyrocketing costs are stunning, and they impose an enormous, and growing, burden on increasingly strained taxpayers. Corrective action is essential and can no longer be delayed.”
Some of this is attributed to Mayor Bloomberg's generous policies and contract re-negotiations, but his office says the mayor supports pension reform but can't do anything about it without the state's action (Governor Paterson has more recently promised to help). Mayoral spokesman Marc LaVorgna added, “Rapidly rising [health care] costs are not unique to New York City government. That’s a national problem and there’s really not a local solution to what’s a national health care problem.”
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
From now in it's no more Mr. Niceguy when dealing with the fat, angry black women at the PO. If I'd been handed a job that paid a salary this good based solely on the color of my skin I'd wear a shit eating grin to work everyday from here to Cleveland. Next week I address everything in illegible red ink, biotches!
Redirect your anger bernie! Post Office workers are employees of the United States Postal Service not the City of New York.
The salary increase compared with the private sector have been virtually the same. The issue is with the benefits, health insurance and pensions mostly. And the difference is mainly because the private sector is eliminating benefits left and right. Over 40 million people without health insurance in this country and almost nobody with a pension, just rolling the dice on Wall Street with their 401k or 403b.
penions and the "20 and out" are killing the city
people are living longer, these retirement benefits are overly generous and unsustainable
you guys obviously have trouble understanding what the word average means.
Pensions and entitlements are the untouchable areas our politicos are afraid to address. Probably because they too have incredibly fat publicly-funded pensions waiting in the wings.
I don't make anywhere near what these SOBs make, yet I get handed another tax increase on my crap apartment. I can barely get by after paying taxes to this city. This is ridiculous.
Bloomberg, you have been a complete disaster as Mayor!
Entitlements like this are unsustainable in a global economy except under the setting of protectionism, strong nationalism, and a society with low expectations. France anyone?
the sick thing is, does NYC need over 280,000 employees? WTF do they all do? (Besides the ones I see that do absolutely nothing) Most states don't even have that many and cover far larger areas.
Just try to find someone who will run into a burning building for $36K a year without overtime, scaled pay, health insurance, disabilities, pension, and early retirement. Someone who wouldn't leave as soon as they found a better job, wasting all the money you spent training them. Cops, firefighters, teachers - this is what it costs to retain these people. As for the morons at the post office? - that's federal so this article doesn't speak to their compensation.
ok cops, firefighters, teachers
now what about the rest of the 250K+ "public servants"
There's 40,000 police, 15,000 firefighters, 75,000 teachers, and 10,000 Sanitation workers so your 250K estimate is way off. But keep going with your fantasy that the city has 100's of thousands of extraneous employees.
there are actually 280,649 as of the end of 2008, so its an underestimate... and there are too many public employees. The state and city budgets are breaking down and people are no longer willing to pay the extremely high taxes in this place to keep it up... especially now when jobs are leaving as well. The public sector needs to wake up to this or many will be left with absolutely nothing when the state or city have to claim bankruptcy under their weight.
Those three categories cover around 130,000 of the employees. There are over 80,000 teachers alone.
Oh well, thats the gamble you take. Everyone on wall st. and the dot commers were living the high life for years and years.
Now that things come crashing down they want to look at our health insurance benefits?
Sorry guys, going into finance and marketing was your choice...not mine. Sorry you took a gamble and it didn't pay out.
Except now it's affecting people who don't work in those areas. Those mfers are screwing up my life too!
Damn - I left the employ of the City too soon! And BTW - most city employees are actually hard working and committed to the ideal of civil service, that is working for the benefit of the greater good.
Alot of City jobs are handed out in the following order:
1. Whose re-election campaign you funded.
2. What color your skin is. If its white and not gay, go to the back of the line.
3. If you're willing to conform to their idea of mediocrity.
I think that every year there should be fewer city workers than the year before.
I agree with a few posters above. The size of the city government rivals the federal government. Does someone have comparison numbers?
what asshole created this using comic sans?
and without using a spell-checker.
"Pension Contibutions"
I love how many assume the worst instead of trying to peel back these averages objectively.
Nothing is wrong with cops and firefighters having a decent salary and retirement. They should be rewarded for the jobs they do.
How much would it take you to deal with the scum that they do?
Probably not 45k.
Or a teacher.
Have you seen the kids in our schools these days?
In case you didn't notice 69k is NOT a lot of money here in NYC.