The “Disability Epidemic” Among Union Employees

If you don’t want to get angry after reading these first couple of paragraphs of this New York Times story, then don’t click through here:

To understand what it’s like to work on the railroad — the Long
Island Rail Road — a good place to start is the Sunken Meadow golf course, a
rolling stretch of state-owned land on Long Island Sound.

During the workweek, it is not uncommon to find retired L.I.R.R.
employees, sometimes dozens of them, golfing there. A few even walk the course.
Yet this is not your typical retiree outing.

These golfers are considered disabled. At an age when most people
still work, they get a pension and tens of thousands of dollars in annual
disability payments — a sum roughly equal to the base salary of their old jobs.
Even the golf is free, courtesy of New York State taxpayers.

With incentives like these, occupational disabilities at the L.I.R.R.
have become a full-blown epidemic.

For more on the “epidemic” read on…