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Peer Pressure, Hawaiian Style

In Hawaii news today (22 December 2009), President Mirkwood of Central Pacific State University announced that, since the faculty union of CPSU declined to accept pay cuts, furloughs, or layoffs as had other state employees (the Governor and most upper management not included), she would seek to impose 6.7% cuts to faculty salaries effective 1 January 2010.

The CPSU faculty members, whose pay levels have only just recovered from the hits they took the last time Hawaii’s economy went south, and which still do not recover the costs of their education, have made known, through their union, their intention to resist this move, as they resisted the initial proposal.

Public reaction?

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba quotes a typical response from a newspaper’s online comment section:

Fire them all. We don’t need CPSU.

Too late. I’m already gone.

~Amoeba

10 Comments

    1. Well, once again my Unemployment paperwork has been “lost”. I can tell you first hand how Hawaii is keeping it’s unemployment figures down. It isn’t putting people in the system!

      1. And you expected any less? LOL. Hey Q…but let’s spend bilions of tax payer dollars on a rail system…Now there’s the answer … see the way I figure it is if they loose you on the computer, they can gain one more spike in the rail system … good trade off don’t ya think? Yeah right… I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again…Tis the season LOL
        .-= Thom´s last blog ..Some Christmas Cheer =-.

    2. Yes, but Thom, this whole game is about making sure that people still have tax refunds. Especially the literal and figurative descendants of Hawaii’s Big Five, Lingle’s true constituency, who want their pockets full and those of the rest of us coolies empty.
      .-= the amoeba´s last blog ..Amoeba Has Left The Building =-.

    1. Karen, I just got intelligence from a person who writes that the military wants to be on the next plane out of Hawaii, too. That will really leave these islands on a leaky wa‘a without a paddle, in shark-infested waters.
      .-= the amoeba´s last blog ..Amoeba Has Left The Building =-.

    1. Thanks, Dawg. But the last broadcast email I received from the president of the University of Washington has lessened my expectations. After all, Washington residents Gates and Allen have to protect the $60 billion foundation they’ve amassed from the sale of software that doesn’t work.

      Academia, and education generally, is a “subsidy” profession – only those who are subsidized by inherited income or a partner with an economically-rational job need apply. And clearly, We the People of these Untied States wish it no other way. I fear my days in this profession are numbered.
      .-= the amoeba´s last blog ..Amoeba Has Left The Building =-.

  4. Well, it’s good you’re getting out and moving on to better opportunities. I can’t help though, but wonder if there aren’t at least a few of those employees who don’t WANT to move, who fear for their jobs, and who would be willing to accept the pay cut just to keep their family together or WHATEVER. I know — it’s obvious that the MAJORITY do indeed feel taken advantage of … perhaps even the entirety! I just always feel for the ones who are being dragged along by what the what the majority voted for them… I remember when I was in the Union (sheet metal workers) I was almost always on the “other” side because MY situation was different. I was single. I had a kid… I didn’t have “another” income to help me get by. So the idea of going on STRIKE absolutely terrified me! But majority is majority. I HATED the UNION! Hated it!
    .-= Melli´s last blog ..Are We THERE Yet? =-.

    1. Melli, there are such people, and it is those people and their fears that allow those who rule over us to pick the unions apart and eventually break them. We forget that, just as there was a time before Macbooks, there was a time before unions. And both you and that kid of yours would be on the line working twelve-hour days for maybe half of what you needed to get a decent meal. Because you would willingly work for those slave wages and that made you cheaper than the machine that would do your jobs. Until the machine’s price dropped, and then both you and your kid (well, maybe not the kid, (s)he could get into tight and dangerous places no machine could reach) would be out on the street.

      Milton Friedman and Karl Marx both agreed on one thing: the business of business is business. Making money is the sole object. By any means necessary, without regard to social codes or moral strictures. The difference is, to Friedman, the situation is right and proper. “Ford’s in his flivver, all’s right with the world.” To Marx, the situation called for revolution.
      .-= the amoeba´s last blog ..Amoeba Has Left The Building =-.

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