12 Responses

1. If the unions are panicking then Gov. Cristie must be doing something right. Its time to put the interest of the tax payers first. The outrages contracts they get must stop.

2. To use this comparison is an obscenity. I read nothing about murder or treating people differently based on their religion.
   I think an argument should be made that anybody that made the statement should be dismissed from their State job.

3. #2 – Well stated. Nazis were were those who shot entire communities into mass graves and gased trainloads of innocent men women and children. They were not politicians who simply had a political view and agenda inconvenient to the another person’s cause. This man’s comments are an outrage. He has trampled on the graves of six million Jews as well as millions of of other human beings for the sake of a cheap soundbite. This should not be tolerated. Every decent person in the state of New Jersey (regardless of political or religious affiliation) should demand his resignation.

4. What chutzpa. What brainlessness. The union leaders sooner or later will have to accept that with almost every state hurting, there’s no more gravy train. Times have changed, probably for good. Don’t blame Cristie. He’s only putting the needs of the majority first.

5. He thinks he is cute but had this yuld been in germany it would have been six million AND ONE!

6. Once upon a time the Unions were excellent. The fire in Triangle Cloths factory which was run by Jews and open on SHabbos cause a great great need for unions. Today the unions are must a bunch of thugs; Jimmie Hoffa, is a great example. The steel worker union in NY is another. The union boss stir up trouble to justify the union to take money from the members to live like kings. Look in NY the teacher represented in the school teaches one class and get paid from the system as he worked the whole day. The same time he is getting payment from the union. Look at the sanitation workers union who divided up NYC and was literally a mafia

7. This fellow is mocking us non-union members as if we are second class American Citizens. The union bosses spit on the common folk that really built this country. So now we non-union everyday American citizens as the real majority, as the real hard workers of America must crush these type of people and criminalize their behavior. Any group that organizes with the intent of ripping off the people (us)must be banned.
   Kol haposel bemumau posel.

8. Yeah, yeah, yeah …and you guys call Obama a Socialist, or a Muslim, or a Communist…all of it, the Nazi comment too, is over the top, disrespectful and stupid.

   And I bet YITZCHOK and the rest of you couldn’t write a coherent sentence about the impact of collective bargaining on employee working conditions in this country…or about how since the anti-union movement picked up steam beginning with the breaking of the Air Traffic Controllers’ strike under Reagen this country has seen a diminution in union representation…and working conditions…for everyone.

   You guys are all ideology and rhetoric with no knowledge of history. (Of course, those of you who are Yeshivishe came through a system where the study of history is “treif”) – Reminds me of a Conservative “Rabbi” I once met, mouthing off about the Prozbul being a valid precedent for allowing driving on Shabbos…he felt so proud of himself and thought he really knew what he was talking about.

   Ignorance can be dangerous bliss

9. rdavid (#7)- From 1967-1970 I was a merchant seaman, and a member of the NMU (National Maritime Union). In 1969 on the S.S. Texacco Massachusetts we had a Chief Mate in his late 60s who still carried with him the traditional billy club that, before the 1937 unionization of the merchany marine, could be used on recalcitrant deck hands.

   This history is not rare…Do you think that the “work Saturday or don’t work at all” condition reflected a unique anti-semetic situation.

   Before unions there were no labor laws protecting the basic empoyee rights that we all take for granted. I am a public sector attorney (non-union, by the way), and I’d be the first to go on, intelligently and with detailed knowledge I hope, about how public sector unions and their cozy government employers have gone too far – how public sector unions in too many cases (but not all by any stretch) make a mockery out of meaningful collective bargaining…

   BUT…that is not the same thing as condemning collective bargaining across the board, or feeling gloatful and triumphant when lower middle class workers, firefighters, and teachers are made to pay for decades of abuses that include willful diversions of pension funds by Governor and legislature, after Governor and Legislature…after Governor and legislature.

   I have a friend who makes $78,000 in a human resources State job in NJ…he has 26 years in. He told me last night that he now pays a little over $52 every two weeks for medical insurance for himself and his wife, a figure that will grow to $258 in three years under the legislation that Christie and Sweeney are selling as essential “reform” – his TAKE HOME pay will be reduced by some over $5,300 a year.

   If you feel good about this, feel triumphal about it…then admit it…but don’t make it out to be some sort of meaningful reform that merely makes my friend bare “his share” of the downturn.

10. Yonason you criticize the way I write but look at the way you read. I gave credit to the unions; however it has turn into a bunch of thugs like SEIU. Unions did and I repeat did
    serve a purpose but they got out of hand. The unions destroyed the American car industry. First the car companies did not care what they built and the unions could not demand enough for it workers which a lot ended into the union org. The foreign car industry took off in America and brought the American car industry to its knees. The government took over the massive pension, and health funds that the companies could not afford to pay.
    Examples of the car industry in America the same car toyota built for $15,000 cost US car companies $16,500 to pay for retired worker benefit; fought for by the unions
    paid for by the buyer of cars which end result AMericans swith to foreign cars. What about California’s workers union 30 years and out with 3% per year [90%] of the last year worked. Can an employee afford to pay 90% of pay for a worker for 20, 25, 30, 35 years or more. It is more than the worker ever made altogether. The is what the union have done to America./ Now please answer

11. To #10 Yitzchoky: I basically agree with you, but you didn’t mention one fact that I think is important to know: The foreign car companies—Toyota, Honda, German car makers, etc., when they set up factories in America to build their cars, in almost every case built their factories in the South, where unions are weak. They’re not stupid. The American car makers are stuck with their unionized employees in their factories in heavily unionized states like Michigan, Ohio, etc. That’s a major reason that the foreign car makers have a sizeable cost advantage over our car makers—Ford, GM, and Chrysler.

12. To: YonasonW

    No need to point by point you. There is absolutely no reason a union member should have an ounce of extra benefits over a non-union member. We can not be expected to pay union members for abuses to other citizens 50 years ago. If at all let all the citizens receive this compensation I don’t know from who.