NEW:
Collapse of public-sector bargaining
Commentary
AUG. 22, 2011
By Lanny Ebenstei,
president of the California Center for Public Policy
There can be
little question that great change is in the offing in our society in many
areas, including the provision of public services. Public-sector employees
are overpaid. They are overpaid across the board, in salary, overtime,
benefits, health insurance, days off, holidays, vacations, working
conditions and, most of all, pensions.
Public-sector
employees receive compensation that private-sector workers do not. If
public-sector employees in California
were paid a fair wage, not an inflated one, it would be possible to lower taxes
and increase public services in the state, not raise taxes and slash services.
The answer
is to end collective bargaining for public employees. President Franklin
Roosevelt said that there was a great distinction between private and public
sector unions: “Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relations
and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the government.
… The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be
transplanted into the public sector.” George Meany,
the first and longtime president of the AFL-CIO, was of the same opinion.
Ending
public-sector collective bargaining would enable each local government agency
in the state, and the state itself, to establish the pay cutbacks and benefit
reductions that will make sense for it. The status quo is unsustainable. In a
democracy, it will not be the case that programs for seniors, children, the
environment, the ill, the unemployed, the infirm and the homeless will be
eviscerated to enable the remaining public servants and public-sector retirees
to live in luxury.
Wealth
Transfer
Local and state
governments were not created to be vehicles of wealth transfer from society as
a whole to public-sector employees and retirees through
regressive taxation. Current government tax and spending policies take from the
poor and give to the relatively rich.
Public-sector
employees work fewer hours than other employees because they have more days
off. The typical public employee in California
works a four-day week or less. After working fewer hours during their careers,
public-sector employees can retire at a younger age — often age 50 to 55 — with
pensions, indexed for inflation, of 75 to 90 percent of their final salary.
It is time
to end public-sector collective bargaining in California. Public-sector employees
work less while they are working and they retire at an earlier age by a decade
or more than private-sector workers, and retire with much better pension
benefits.
This system
has to change, and it has to change now. The question is the direction that
change will take. Ending public-sector collective bargaining is the right
answer to the problems that face California.
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2011/08/22/coming-collapse-of-public-sector-bargaining/