Detroit Rock-Headed City

In a pretty awful decision, the federal judge in charge of Detroit's bankruptcy case has ruled that in spite of the state's constitution specifically preventing pension cuts to resolve bankruptcies, city workers and retirees now face the axe for the unpardonable sin of being government employees.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes ruled today that pensions of city retirees can legally be cut in Detroit’s bankruptcy — a decision that came as a significant surprise to people observing the case. 

Rhodes emphasized he won’t necessarily allow pension cuts to be approved in the city’s final reorganization plan, called a “plan of adjustment.” 

Rhodes previously signaled that he planned to decide the issue of whether the pensions can be cut later in the case. But today he said he changed his mind and decided ruling on the issue now would expedite the bankruptcy. 

Almost immediately afterward, Michigan Council 25 of AFSCME, the city's largest employee union, filed an appeal to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The union also plans to ask Rhodes to allow the case to be sent directly to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to expedite the case.

So the only question now is how much will Detroit's city workers be made to suffer.  Of course, that's the entire point:  a shot across the bow of what little worker union power is left in a country built by unions to let them know that if you spent your career working for a local or state government, that local or state government doesn't have to keep its word and will come for your pension, health benefits, and everything else.

You're not an employee, after all.  You work at the sufferance of the mob that believes government workers are parasites who can have everything taken from them by enough angry taxpayers, looking to take their own private sector miseries in an at-will, right-to-work employee world out on whomever they can lash out at the easiest.

After all, if your boss can take everything from you without warning or any hope of redress, why should "those people" not suffer the same fate when you, as a taxpayer, are their boss, right?

Because unions are the bad guys here, you see.  We should all be equally miserable with declining real wages, fewer benefits, longer hours and less worker safety like real 'muricans, dammit.