It is almost sacrilege to admit this but I'm not a regular reader of Daily Kos, not even an irregular reader, not even an "now and then" reader. However, lefty blogs alerted me to two PA-related posts today, from furloughed state workers. If this is a topic you are interested in, please read
Is it okay to hold workers hostage for an agenda?
The PA budget impasse, an employee's look
Monday, July 09, 2007
Blog Posts From Two Furloughed State Workers
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
7 comments:
FTR, Rendell said at his press conf tonight that the state workers who lost a day's pay today will be "made whole", read "paid".
PD, nope, sorry, he said he would try to make them whole, would look into possibilities of making them whole, but it is not a sure thing.
They'll be paid, it will just be done in a creative way. If I were a state employee, I wouldn't be worried about not being reimbursed.
You may not but many workers probably will be. If the money isn't in the same paycheck some bills may be late and even a few missed deadlines can have a negative effect on people's credit rating. Miss one credit card payment date and they can dramatically raise your interest rates. Whatever creative way the state comes up with to reimburse people won't help them with that kind of problem. And it can have long lasting implications.
Well, I think that is overstating things. It's one day's pay, not a week or a month. Will a very few households have to cut back on some non-essentials for a few days, a week or a month? Perhaps. But every household should be prepared for a small unexpected financial hiccup. It's not like the non-essential state employees didn't have any warning they might be furloughed
and had no chance to plan for that event.
As we now see, the state workers will probably get extra time not money. And while everyone should have a little money tucked away for a rainy day, not everyone does or can at any given moment. The decision on who was essential and who wasn't seems to have been made in a somewhat patchwork fashion, as casinos workers were exempted at the last minute.
Somewhere in those 24,000 people are those who are just getting back on their feet after being laid off, or dealing with family health issues, or just had a car die on them, or any number of other emergencies that can tangle up the finances.
You and I, PD, may be smart, but we are also very very luck.
Jane, I agree that you and I have been lucky not to have had large unexpected expenses or bills so far. I can sympathize who those who have not been so fortunate. That said, I don't preach what I don't myself practice. There are things that are nice, but not necessary to have, that can be sacrificed in the short run to cover small financial hiccups like this. I wonder how many state employees who are claiming to live "paycheck to paycheck" include in their essentials costs for things like land lines AND cell phones, top tier cable TV, cigarettes, beer, a pop or snacks from the machine at work, buying brand name foods and other incidentals that you can live without? Cut our or cut back on some of those and you CAN save for a rainy day. I've done it.
Post a Comment