Alas, the blog puts forward fairly standard information that, while impressive, is also quite misleading. Consider the following:
● US Bureau of Labor statistics show state and local government employees earning on average $39.60 per hour, compared to $27.42 per hour for the private sector.... 44% more.
That is a very impressive statistic except it inherently depends on the private and public employing being comparable. Since the issue at hand is teachers, I will look at them specifically. In California, at least, in order to teach at the high school level one needs a masters degree or equivalent in the topic (the "or equivalent" being tests designed to evaluate the knowledge one would have received in a masters program). Thus, if we want to compare the average public school high school teacher to the private sector, it would need to be specifically against the earnings of other individuals with master's degrees. We would expect a private sector employee with a BA only to earn less than a public sector employee with an MA. Likewise, we would expect a private sector employee with only a high school diploma to earn substantially less than a public employee with an MA.
While there are significant numbers of unskilled laborers in the government (the local DMV staff, for example), the government also employs a high number of skilled individuals. Generally, the public sector has a density close to three times that of the private sector for advanced degrees. More education does translate into better pay. Not only is this the way the real world works, it is also the way that it should be expected to work. Thus, if for no other reason alone, this statistic is misleading. At the very least one needs to compare individuals of similar educational levels. When done so, the results are not so clear cut. Consider the following link:
http://www.theday.com/article/20110306/NWS12/303069900/1017To sum up that article, unskilled government employees do indeed make more than their private counterparts. However, skilled public employees make less than skilled private ones (and the higher one's education, the less one makes in comparison).
Likewise, the federal government tends to employ even more skilled employees than the state government. In turn one should expect even higher compensation in that regard.
Regarding the hours worked, I must confess I was unable to find the average number of days worked, so I had to work backwards from the numbers the blog age. On average, it looks like the public sector employee gets 5.5 weeks off a year, while the private sector employee gets less than 1 week off. Is this a case of public sector employees getting too much time off, or private sector employees getting too little? Actually, probably it is a case of private sector employees getting their overtime recorded, while usually public sector employees (like teachers) do not get compensated for extra time invested. Having worked in both, the private sector was very careful to document overtime: my personal impression was that this was out of fear of being sued. In contrast, in the public sector I was many times told to go home rather than to stay late (and yet the projects still had to be done on time: lacking elves to perform the work while one sleeps, this usually translated into undocumented overtime). My impression here is that the government tends to try to minimize overtime because of excess expenses.
Perhaps somewhere there is a teacher who only puts in those 1440 hours for the job, but that is not the norm. Unfortunately, it is darn difficult to find the real number of hours invested for teaching (as most studies seem to focus on only on-the-clock hours), but anecdotal evidence suggests that between 50~60 hours a week is standard. This translates into around 1800-2160 real hours (assuming 4 months off total for summers, spring vacation, winter break, and misc days) worked over the course of a year. So the real number is disturbingly close to, if not more than, the private sector.
Regarding pension plans, allow me to refer you to this article:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/06/109649/why-employee-pensions-arent-bankrupting.html?storylink=addthisOr if you would like something more technical:
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/pensions-2011-02.pdfTo sum up, however, pension plans are a tiny portion of state budgets and many such plans currently have enough funds to pay out for several years even if they receive no additional contributions or growth. True, the state does owe a lot of money to public employees in pensions... but this is specifically because a lot of that money has been already invested. It isn't that the pensioners are getting money they didn't earn, but rather they are getting the money back that they invested. You will note that the blog you linked to, Genesis, doesn't state at what rate the defined-benefit pensions plans are for. Being more familiar with Texas' teacher retirement plan than any other (seeing as I used to have funds with them), the base rate is around 50% at a retirement age (if I am recalling correctly) of around 65, though the percentage can be adjusted depending on how long beyond retirement eligibility one is willing to work. Again, if I am recalling correctly, 100% required one to work around 85-90 years. This isn't a particularly amazing package.
Which finally brings us to the claim you wanted outside opinions for:
As long as unions earn more than the people who pay their salaries, as long as they work fewer hours and can’t be fired, and as long as they whine and protest the smallest reforms, the unions are risking political oblivion. Wisconsin was the first state to allow public employees to unionize, now it may be the first to ban them. . . and others will follow suit.
As noted above, the claim that public employees work fewer hours is largely a false one. Likewise, that they earn more than the people who pay their salaries (which also includes the public employees themselves, mind) is misleading as it doesn't take into consideration educational differences: the question isn't if they earn more, but if they earn too much for their educational level and position. The blog does not present any evidence in that regard and everything I am aware of indicates that if anything, skilled public employees earn less than those of comparable education in the private sector. As for protesting the smallest reform, do note that in the Wisconsin case the protesters have stated that they are willing to take the financial reforms but are holding out on collective bargaining rights. They are not protesting the "smallest reforms" but rather fundamental ones. Really, the only point that the article makes which may even orbit the world of truth is the difficulty of firing such individuals. That may have once been the case, but tenure is meaning less and less these days so it seems to be an argument that is already becoming outdated.
But I would like to pose my own question: why should some citizens have their rights to unionize revoked merely because of who they work for? What gives the government the authority to take the rights away from any citizen?
Edit: Corrected misspellings and grammar and clarified a few points. Also, added the below
There has been something that has been banging around my head for the last month that I thought I would go ahead and share. The blog link, Genesis, nicely sums up a particularly dangerous sentiment: unionized workers are bad because they earn too much and have too cushy of jobs.
Why is it that people look to unions, teachers, etc, and lament how much they earn? Why is it that these people do not rather question why it is that they do not likewise earn as much, or have as much job security, or have as nice of pensions? In short, there is a dangerous sentiment in the United State that says people have no right to earn a good living, which has replaced the older sentiment of desiring to better one's self so that one could enjoy that prosperity. Instead of people wishing to climb the social ladder, it seems as if there is a desire to pull others down it.
There is a large, fundamental question around which much of historical research orbits: why is it that the West came to dominate the world state instead of the East? (to note, terms like "The West" and "The East" are themselves highly contentious)
In 1400, the safe money was on China and India being the major world players as they had been for most of history. They were the ones who one would have expected to make the great discoveries, the great advancements, etc. So why Europe instead?
This question has been asked since around the time that it was clear that Europe was starting to dominate the world, so I do not expect any answer I give to be definitive in any way. But it seems that a significant portion of Europe's edge was the rise of the middle class. And yet, in the modern era, it seems that the middle class is loosing out. Instead of the old peasants and bourgeois banding together against the aristocracy, the peasant and the aristocracy are now banding together against the bourgeois. That blog, Genesis, seems to represent a dangerous sentiment because it seems to be set against the very thing that made the Western world something worth talking about.
