By now its no secret that civil service jobs are under fire around the country as states and local governments work to get their arms around massive budget deficits. On the other hand threatening firefighters is a new low. That seems to be the approach of Clarke County, Nevada...propose a 5% cut on the fire departments budget over two years. To add insult to injury, a supposed labor expert states "...firefighters are not untouchable any more..." Interesting how this person is such a labor expert but asked to remain anonymous. So with so called "labor experts" injecting anonymous statements like that the subtle message is something like, take a 5% pay cut now or maybe a very near future 100% pay cut if you resist.

Talk about bad juju. Las Vegas is already struggling with its image and this is how you treat firefighters. You know the run into the burning multi-million dollar casino and save the riches kind of guys. What a thank you for a job well done. BTW - Las Vegas firefighters are standing their ground given past empty promises on pay adjustments following recovery from previous budget shortfalls. So needless to say what reason is there to think that promises would be honored this go around? Can you say social responsibility...maybe Clarke County should consider that, but then that would be outside the bounds of capitalism huh.

Take the money and run. That is essentially what struggling newspaper The Boston Globe is saying to its union workers who are in down to the wire contract discussions. According to the Guild, the Globe originally offered a 23% across the board pay cut. The current and presumably final offer includes an 8.4% pay cut,  increased health care coverage costs, 401K losses, pension contributions and reduced unemployment benefits that together is worse than the 23% across the board pay cut. Talk about going from bad to worse.

Undoubtedly, The Boston Globe's woes are driven by a mass exodus from traditional newspaper print circulation to digital media i.e. the internet. This is all too common of a situation as newspapers across the country are struggling with print circulation; most of them were afforded ample opportunity to get on board with the internet movement by did nothing. So it looks like the working guy is going to get the shaft, again, for questionable business decisions made by the powers that be. Look out here it comes....SHAFT