Hard time come again no more

we had emergency union meetings today after school. The government and union are fighting about the contract. They reached a compromise and needed union members to vote on it. Things became almost violent between the yes and no camps. some people said no on the contract believing that we should be happy to have jobs at all or no because they feel we're being screwed. other people are upset that executives got $800,000 bonuses paid by the government a few months back in the name of upholding a legal contract while the government is screwing us out of our rases that were in a contract.

i'm not mad at the no riase aspect of the contract. i'm mad they're fucking with my pension after-the-fact as well as my step level and talking about messing with the health plan. with the step issue, we will all lose experience levels that will set us back years in the long run for retirement. the last time this happened, the board promised that they'd retrograde our levels to the proper place when times were better, but they never did. hence the angry naysayers. my other pet peeve is that the county superintendant will get a 14% raise this year, making his salary go up about 30% in the last three years when he was making well over 6 figures to begin with.

The county threatened us if we didn't vote yes, which pissed the lawyers off no end. They also informed us that if we vote no, we'll be working without a contract next year. I'm of the opinion that the contract is useless because according to state law, the government does not have to uphold contracts signed with state employees. so what's the point of the union? not much. it saves us from getting fired and that's about it. i left the meeting when i got tired of the fighting. my guy and i had a long talk about it all tonight. he voted yes, but didn't feel that it mattered either way, because the government apparently has the right to change agreed upon contracts at will.