Public Sector Employees Quotes

The government union bosses are the most powerful politicians in Springfield.

I respect the state workers and I respect their unions, but we simply can't afford to pay benefits and pensions that are out of line with economic reality.

Several unions have agreed to larger employee contributions for their members. Taxpayers are living with cuts and making sacrifices to deal with the reality of California's budget crisis, state workers are going to have to do the same.

Our public services and the great people who work in them are improving lives.

Some people say that watching pay freezes in the government is like watching water freeze. It expands.

The city’s [civil service] workforce must be considered part of the solution, not the problem.

Government workers think the job of everyone else in the economy is to protect their high salaries, crazy work rules and obscene pensions. They self-righteously lecture us about public service, the children, a 'living wage' all in the service of squeezing more money from the taxpayer to fund their breathtakingly selfish job arrangements.

We've discussed the public sector union people. We are messing with their bread and butter. They have their hands in the treasuries of all states in which they operate and the US Treasury. They have their hands there. That's how they live. Now, we're broke and the states are broke for a multitude of reasons. What they're being paid is among them.

Frankly, no issue is worth shutting down the government and denying pay to those committed to public service.

I recognize that as governor, my job is to sit on the other side of the table from the public sector unions and negotiate effectively on behalf of all the taxpayers of the state, including all of you.

I spent 19 years as a local government official; I spent two years in the Iowa Senate; my daughter is a public school teacher. We're all counting on IPERS. The public servants are counting on the system they were promised when entering public service.

AFSCME stands for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.