Public servants' cuts hardly 'modest'
In his recent campaign plug for Zack Scrivner, Californian CEO Richard Beene insults the hardworking public servants of Bakersfield and Kern County ("Bakersfield Observed: A Blog About Life, Media, Politics and People," June 4).
As president-elect of SEIU Local 521, Kern County chapter, I can tell you we have taken our "share of the cuts." City workers have postponed several raises. Some colleagues have still lost their jobs. The rest of us struggle to provide service with fewer people -- just like the private sector.
County workers have made exactly the sacrifices Scrivner wants, putting new workers on a hybrid retirement plan and paying into our medical benefits -- effectively taking a pay cut. At Kern Medical Center, most nurses now work and get paid for only nine days every two weeks.
The cuts we protest aren't "modest." The layoff of 54 social workers, the people who protect children, is not modest. Slashing already-struggling departments by 20 percent is not modest. And a wealthy man lecturing us on sacrifice is shameless.
We realize that times are tough, and we are making sacrifices. But the truth is that cutting government workers won't rescue the economy. It will mean there are fewer people who can afford to buy groceries; fewer parks, libraries and summer programs for kids; fewer snowplow drivers in Tehachapi in the winter; fewer nurses to immunize against communicable diseases; fewer social workers to pull kids out of homes before they are beaten to death; and fewer people with the means to buy anything advertised in a newspaper.
REGINA KANE
Bakersfield
