So, I am talking to my buddy Otto the other day, and he’s got a libertarian streak significantly wider than my own, and we are talking about the public service (PS) union issue in Wisconsin, USA. And during the conversation, I conceded that it might be the case that the unions had been given something ‘above and beyond’ by the state over the years and that those in the private sector (union or individual) do not get. That they are the new “welfare queens” of the Republicans and tea-partiers.
So, I went and did some more research, and I found it that this is factually not the case, and more. The fact in Wisconsin is that out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin’ s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers. Union members negotiate a total compensation packages that includes salary, pension contributions, and their health care plan. They could take it all in salary, or defer some salary to get the other two. Either way, it’s their money.
Let’s repeat that: All the so-called “employer contributions” made by the state to pensions come out of an overall compensation package negotiated by the PS employees collectively which includes salary, pension and other benefits. Furthermore, the fact is that overall compensation packages for PS employees are the same or lower than those in the private sector. The salary portion of their compensation, in particular, is about 25% below, on average, comparable positions in the private sector. That’s where, at other times, we get the impression that people in the PS don’t get paid that much, but they have easier jobs (a misconception that can be addressed elsewhere).
The lie that is being spun is that these PS employees are getting a “gift” of public money by those who want to rouse your basal tea-party sentiment. The truth is the money in the PS pensions is THEIR money as deferred payment. Of course we all know that saving salary money for the future as deferred payments is evil, right? Those public employees and their unions are so evil and irresponsible, I bet they caused the whole global financial crisis.
To be honest, from my perspective, the only mistake the people in the unions made is taking deferred salary that is not identified as such by an employer that guarantees it – you can’t get it back if no one knows it’s yours.
As Paul Krugman puts it, “Public sector workers are not, on average, grossly overpaid compared with the private sector — period. You can fiddle at the edges of this conclusion, but it’s just not possible to conclude, based on any honest assessment of the data, that schoolteachers are the new welfare queens.”
But there is actually more to the story, as there always is with Krugman, and why I have gone back to read so much of his old stuff. The real problem we aren’t being told from the media in the US is worse, The current problem with public (and possibly private) pensions is that they are all pretty much all “at risk” these days as well. Gone are the days when pensions were put in rock solid low interest things like government bonds. No, today those funds are in the stock market. Yeah, that same stock market that crashed when the greedy bankers sold really bad collateralised debt to unwary or greedy investors who were also mostly bankers. Have a look at this graph from Krugman that shows what pension funds would be worth with simple interest, and what they are actually worth as a result of the GFC.
In a perfect world, the folks at Goldman, Citi, BofA and Wells Fargo that caused the whole fucking problem in the first place should be made the fund managers at these public pensions as indentured servants until such time as the pensions are back to where they would be if they made nothing more than the long term bond rate.
The most amazing thing to me of all, looking from the outside in at the US at present, is that the media seems to be characterising the issue relating to the fiscal crises in the states (and federally) as a battle of priority between the unions and the regular taxpayers, with their newly installed tea party inspired paymasters. The middle class (every one of the people in the union in this story) is not ripping off the state. The banks and rich arseholes that brought the global financial crisis on, then got government support to get through it, and are now paying massive bonuses to those same arseholes are the problem. So, the poor and middle class ought to quit being pitted against one another, and start making the rich see some consequences of their failure.