" Mr. Lonsky - You couldn't be more wrong. As a member of PEF, I'm willing to do my share in this financial crisis and submit to a lag in pay and surrender my three percent raise in salary for this fiscal year, if it will actually help pull us out of this crisis. Most of my union brothers and sisters feel the same. However, will the executive and legislative branches of government do the same? Probably not. As it's done in the past, the State is attempting to balance the budget on the backs of State workers. We've had our pay lagged before, we've had to negotiate contracts without raises and surrendered benefits in order to help balance previous State budgets, all while the private sector continued to grow and your representatives in Albany earned six figure salaries while working only 62 days per year. Many of us are mandated to work long overtime hours, and in the health care field that is just plain dangerous. Using your canine analogy, we're tired of being the dog that gets kicked around, expected to do our usually exceptional job for less money and fewer benefits while forced to work 16 hour shifts. So when an uninformed and prejudicial person like yourself feels compelled to slander the reputations of the good professional people who actually make this State run, we're going to get a bit defensive. Come to work with one of us sometime, and just try to keep up. "