Public employee union membership in Wisconsin has crashed in the last year

[Torie]

Oh, and here is another one for federal employees. The USA Today article says that for federal employees, they make twice as much as the private sector equivalents.

It doesn't say equivalents - it says compared to private sector workers as a whole.

Given what federal agencies do and where they're located, we'd need to know education levels and cost of living. Washington D.C. is among the best-educated metros in the country for a good reason. The federal government has a lot of scientists, regulators, specialists, doctors, etc. The private sector has a mix of doctors, lawyers, burger flippers, and Wal*Mart greeters. Many of the federal government's employees live in places like Montgomery Co., Maryland where they could easily be snapped up by a private company at a higher salary. Despite Sen. Byrd's best efforts they aren't living in cheap cost-of-living private-sector metros like Kansas City or Fresno.

Oh you did look at the federal employee story. My bad. Well then the headline sucks, because it says "counterparts."  Anyway, it says that as to the delta function, since 2000 federal employee pay has zoomed up while private sector pay has stagnated. Is that because the skill and education gap has grown ever larger during that period?

[Beet]

Wow, the heat in here is amazing. I'm trying to fight a desperate rearguard action in favor of a deeply unfortunate status quo, to prevent an even more unfortunate future. Lined up against me are a battery of right-wing posters, including the most formidable debater on the forum, and I'm trying to put my days of deep debate behind me. What shall I say?

Couldn't I refute your last point by pointing out other places with strong unions that aren't doing as well as Germany?  I know I'll probably get called a racist or something, but perhaps Germany is doing well because it's full of Germans?

But what places were you going to bring up? Many countries are dealing with problems stemming with being in a currency union with Germany, that have nothing to do with unions per se [ unions preventing structural reforms yes, but the only reason why those 'reforms' are so critical is because of the currency union ].

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Are you suggesting that Germany has no workplace safety laws, except for unionized workers? Union density is actually not astronomical [although nearly double that of the US] but their political power is much stronger. If what you said were true, most German workers would not be covered by workplace safety laws, which is hard to believe. The Germans are the ones that invented government-provided unemployment insurance. Until Hartz IV, it had one of the most generous unemployment insurance programs in the world. Germany also has a limited work week of about 37 hours, although in practice most Germans work around 40 hours a week. These are set by governmental policy, although unions have a strong hand in the negotiations. The role of unions in Germany is social and political. It is seen as part of the post-WWII model and accepted by business.

Torie: There are a couple of problems with your links. Firstly, in the Ohio link, the reason why the public sector workers are deemed more highly compensated as opposed is less, is entirely due to benefits, and the discrepancy within benefits is entirely due to the defined benefit retirement plans (the AEI finds that it is worth a whopping 45% of salary, compared to just 3% of salary for the private sector). See my post earlier in this thread, where I already agreed that the problem is the pension plans. Secondly, with your USA Today link, the link points out that the Federal government has subcontracted the majority of work it buys and directly employs only at the highest levels. It is not uncommon for a single Federal worker to manage a team of dozens of contractors and subcontractors. The Federal worker has much greater skills, education and responsibility than the contracted workers, and so he is paid more. As a matter of fact there are thousands of Federal positions, requiring all kinds of skills in language/diplomacy, security/cryptography, engineering/patent review, research/biotechnolgoy and others that the government cannot fill. On top of that, many federal positions require an extensive background check, and the number of candidates who both meet the requirements and can pass the background check process is exceedingly low. Unlike the private sector, the Federal government cannot just compensate for the dearth of skilled workers by picking up some Chinese H1B to throw into a military contracting role. Your final link, from Reason.com, is speculative in its conclusions. The main study they rely on, by their own definition, "does not account for differences in worker education, job experience, or job duties", and that "after controlling for the aforementioned variables, public sector workers actually earned 11-12 percent less than comparable private sector workers". In response to this they throw at the reader growth rates of public vs. private workers' benefits and growth rates in public vs. private sector jobs.

Never mind that since the study's data points ended in 2009, the private sector has gained about 4.1 million private sector jobs and lost 500,000 public sector jobs-- the whole premise of using the contemporary private sector as a baseline should be problematic. Ironically in fact, all of the imbalance between public and private sector workers in terms of jobs and income growth occurred under the Bush administration, and none of it under the Obama administration. I mean, isn't Mitt Romney's whole campaign essentially based on the fact that the private sector job market is broken? Private sector job growth since 2000 is well below what is needed for full employment, and private sector wage growth since 2000 is negative, which is a stunning reversal from historical norm. Has there ever been a single decade since 1790 where the jobs record for this country was abysmal as it was during the decade of the 2000s? I'm not sure even the 1930s was worse (perhaps barely), I would have to go back and check. The point is, the private sector's wage and job growth cannot be used as a baseline for what is acceptable. Simply pointing out that the more unionized public sector has performed better for workers than the un-unionized private sector proves nothing, except perhaps that unions are effective in bargaining for the people they represent. The problem is with the private sector, not the public sector.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     With their prodigious tendency to waste taxpayer dollars, public sector unions are better off in the junk heap of history. Would that they'd hasten thither.

Strong unions are necessary to keep the stratifying effects of capitalism in check. And since private sector unions have already historically expired, if public sector unions followed then that would be the end of it altogether.

     The reactionism of public sector unions also wastes money on useless stuff that benefits the union members & hurts everyone else. When the prison guards in California don't want to let people take money out of the prisons, it seems to me that their interests are juxtaposed to those of everyone else, who would rather the state not liquidate.

[Torie]

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Hey Dead0man, you just got a compliment!  

I will deal with you later Beet. I need to get some chores done, and well those paragraph of yours were looong.  Sometimes it is better to have short punchy ones, with multiple little knife thrusts, rather than just take a big swing, hoping to hit one out of the park. jk.

[Beet]

     With their prodigious tendency to waste taxpayer dollars, public sector unions are better off in the junk heap of history. Would that they'd hasten thither.

Strong unions are necessary to keep the stratifying effects of capitalism in check. And since private sector unions have already historically expired, if public sector unions followed then that would be the end of it altogether.

The reactionism of public sector unions also wastes money on useless stuff that benefits the union members & hurts everyone else. When the prison guards in California don't want to let people take money out of the prisons, it seems to me that their interests are juxtaposed to those of everyone else, who would rather the state not liquidate.

Yes, that is correct. Unions are inherently selfish; they go after what benefits their own members at the expense of everyone else. Just as corporations do. Your conclusions would be correct if the prison guards' union were the only union in existence. However, when you have many unions acting in concert to raise the prevailing wage level and exert political pressure on behalf of workers', then the net effect of all these self-interested activities, up to a point, is greater worker security, benefits and influence across certain sectors of the economy. I do not think this applies in the case of industries in the infant or early growth stage, but it applies in the late growth and mature stages (of which prisons, which have been around since probably the time of Hammurabi, almost certainly are one). Think of it like Adam Smith's invisible hand.

[muon2]

     With their prodigious tendency to waste taxpayer dollars, public sector unions are better off in the junk heap of history. Would that they'd hasten thither.

Strong unions are necessary to keep the stratifying effects of capitalism in check. And since private sector unions have already historically expired, if public sector unions followed then that would be the end of it altogether.

     The reactionism of public sector unions also wastes money on useless stuff that benefits the union members & hurts everyone else. When the prison guards in California don't want to let people take money out of the prisons, it seems to me that their interests are juxtaposed to those of everyone else, who would rather the state not liquidate.

One of things that has hurt the public sector unions in IL is that Gov Blago encouraged heavy unionization of the state workforce. The number is quoted to be in the 98-99% range. It's at the point where the governor's political liaisons to the legislature are in a union. The Dems are trying to walk that one back now that the conflict is obvious, but the impression left with the public is very poor.

[minionofmidas]

I'll also point out that the German system is set up so that the unions have a vested interest in the well-being of their employers, unlike the US system which deliberately pits them against each other (and heavily favors the former).

While I'll simply point out that, embedded in the state (and way too removed from their prospective members, way too undemocratic, much weaker than they were, in ways quite resembling the American experience) as German unions are, I do not recall them ever winning the "closed shop" in [either pre-33 Reich or post-45 West] Germany.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Ah, yes. Further weakening of workers' rights and increased dependence of politics on corporate money is just what we need. The slump to parliamentarian plutocracy accelerates.

Workers still have the right to unionize.

lol. A right that exists only on paper and is eviscerated by reality. Not that the pre-Walker status quo provided unions with enough to even sustain themselves in most instances.

How has the right to unionize been squashed?  The laws have merely made it so that unions have less control and workers have more rights over whether or not they want to join said unions.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     With their prodigious tendency to waste taxpayer dollars, public sector unions are better off in the junk heap of history. Would that they'd hasten thither.

Strong unions are necessary to keep the stratifying effects of capitalism in check. And since private sector unions have already historically expired, if public sector unions followed then that would be the end of it altogether.

The reactionism of public sector unions also wastes money on useless stuff that benefits the union members & hurts everyone else. When the prison guards in California don't want to let people take money out of the prisons, it seems to me that their interests are juxtaposed to those of everyone else, who would rather the state not liquidate.

Yes, that is correct. Unions are inherently selfish; they go after what benefits their own members at the expense of everyone else. Just as corporations do. Your conclusions would be correct if the prison guards' union were the only union in existence. However, when you have many unions acting in concert to raise the prevailing wage level and exert political pressure on behalf of workers', Smith's invisible hand.then the net effect of all these self-interested activities, up to a point, is greater worker security, benefits and influence across certain sectors of the economy. I do not think this applies in the case of industries in the infant or early growth stage, but it applies in the late growth and mature stages (of which prisons, which have been around since probably the time of Hammurabi, almost certainly are one). Think of it like Adam

     I can agree that unions have a place in society (though not as prominent a place as most leftists would like). The problem is that while private-sector unions work to pressure corporations, public-sector unions, as an unintentional result of fighting for their own interests, also work against taxpayers in general, which includes many lower- & middle-class persons as well as the super-rich. In this way, they have a complicated relationship with other people.

     As it happens, I think the left-of-center would better serve their cause by promoting a resurgence of private-sector unionization rather than fighting to the death on the hill of public-sector unions. I don't know how feasible that is now, though.

[tpfkaw]

    With their prodigious tendency to waste taxpayer dollars, public sector unions are better off in the junk heap of history. Would that they'd hasten thither.

Strong unions are necessary to keep the stratifying effects of capitalism in check. And since private sector unions have already historically expired, if public sector unions followed then that would be the end of it altogether.

The reactionism of public sector unions also wastes money on useless stuff that benefits the union members & hurts everyone else. When the prison guards in California don't want to let people take money out of the prisons, it seems to me that their interests are juxtaposed to those of everyone else, who would rather the state not liquidate.

Yes, that is correct. Unions are inherently selfish; they go after what benefits their own members at the expense of everyone else. Just as corporations do. Your conclusions would be correct if the prison guards' union were the only union in existence. However, when you have many unions acting in concert to raise the prevailing wage level and exert political pressure on behalf of workers', then the net effect of all these self-interested activities, up to a point, is greater worker security, benefits and influence across certain sectors of the economy. I do not think this applies in the case of industries in the infant or early growth stage, but it applies in the late growth and mature stages (of which prisons, which have been around since probably the time of Hammurabi, almost certainly are one). Think of it like Adam Smith's invisible hand.

It's not like Adam Smith's invisible hand, because there is not a free market in labor but rather a centrally-planned one.  (And that's just referring to private-sector unions - public-sector unions are about as far removed from the free market as one gets).

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Why is it supposedly an inherently bad thing if government workers are paid more than private sector workers?  After all, if basic capitalist theory is correct, higher pay encourages better qualified people to seek out those jobs.  Shouldn't we want the people working in government to be at least as well qualified as an average employee, if not better?

Higher pay is not a problem unless government is unable to weed out employees who are not qualified for the pay they are receiving.  And that is problem no matter what level of pay they receive.

[LastVoter]

    With their prodigious tendency to waste taxpayer dollars, public sector unions are better off in the junk heap of history. Would that they'd hasten thither.

Strong unions are necessary to keep the stratifying effects of capitalism in check. And since private sector unions have already historically expired, if public sector unions followed then that would be the end of it altogether.

The reactionism of public sector unions also wastes money on useless stuff that benefits the union members & hurts everyone else. When the prison guards in California don't want to let people take money out of the prisons, it seems to me that their interests are juxtaposed to those of everyone else, who would rather the state not liquidate.

Yes, that is correct. Unions are inherently selfish; they go after what benefits their own members at the expense of everyone else. Just as corporations do. Your conclusions would be correct if the prison guards' union were the only union in existence. However, when you have many unions acting in concert to raise the prevailing wage level and exert political pressure on behalf of workers', then the net effect of all these self-interested activities, up to a point, is greater worker security, benefits and influence across certain sectors of the economy. I do not think this applies in the case of industries in the infant or early growth stage, but it applies in the late growth and mature stages (of which prisons, which have been around since probably the time of Hammurabi, almost certainly are one). Think of it like Adam Smith's invisible hand.

It's not like Adam Smith's invisible hand, because there is not a free market in labor but rather a centrally-planned one.  (And that's just referring to private-sector unions - public-sector unions are about as far removed from the free market as one gets).

Lol @ the notion of free-market labor

[dead0man]

Why is it supposedly an inherently bad thing if government workers are paid more than private sector workers?  After all, if basic capitalist theory is correct, higher pay encourages better qualified people to seek out those jobs.  Shouldn't we want the people working in government to be at least as well qualified as an average employee, if not better?

Higher pay is not a problem unless government is unable to weed out employees who are not qualified for the pay they are receiving.  And that is problem no matter what level of pay they receive.

Indeed.  Yet another area where unions fail the people.

[All Along The Watchtower]

The amount of reactionary right-wing hackery in this thread-posts that demonstrate ignorance of history and contempt for the organizations that have been the main reasons for any sort of public welfare, which benefits ALL people (rather than "the market" that, left to its own devices, always punishes the many for the privilege of the few)-is quite breathtaking.

But then again, bourgeois individualism has always bred arrogance and hubris.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

The amount of reactionary right-wing hackery in this thread-posts that demonstrate ignorance of history and contempt for the organizations that have been the main reasons for any sort of public welfare, which benefits ALL people (rather than "the market" that, left to its own devices, always punishes the many for the privilege of the few)-is quite breathtaking.

But then again, bourgeois individualism has always bred arrogance and hubris.

Defense of what's happened in Wisconsin is right-wing hackery?  Yet calling those hacks arrogant and prideful isn't hackery?