KY Adopts Corporate Slave Labor Policies for State Workers

I don't even know where to fucking begin with this shit. 

First, they're lying about it taking two more months to get a new employee.  Retirees have to give at least two months' notice; obviously the Labor Cabinet decided not to even attempt to hire a replacement, because they have slave labor right there in the building.

Second, are the snow shovelers going to get hazardous duty pay and retirement benefits?  Snow shoveling has killed 8 people in Western New York just this week.

Third, reason the infinite that public employees, like all employees, need strong, independent unions to prevent shit like this from happening.

From the Herald:

It's not in their job descriptions, but several state Labor Cabinet office employees were in line this week to be drafted to shovel snow from sidewalks and the parking lot at the cabinet's headquarters this winter.

One came forward to volunteer for the job, but David Smith, president of the Kentucky Association of State Employees,* is still outraged that office workers would be called on for snow-removal duties.

"This gives me great concern," Smith said Thursday. "There are people trained and hired to do such work, not these folks. This is so unfair. Why in the world do they get office employees who are untrained in shoveling snow to do this? It's so ironic that this is happening in the Labor Cabinet."

The cabinet's website says its primary responsibility is "to ensure the equitable and fair treatment of the commonwealth's 1.9 million wage-earning employees."

Five employees — men and women — at the Labor Cabinet who work in office jobs learned Wednesday in an email from cabinet human resources manager Patricia Dempsey that "winter help" was needed.

And fourth, if the Labor Cabinet gets away with this, office workers throughout state government are going to be doing maintenance work for which they are not qualified, trained or physically able to do.

* KASE is not a union, and has no power to collectively bargain, much less to enforce the few employee protections that still exist in Kentucky.