In Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Scheer of the First Amendment Coalition blames public employee unions themselves for the defensive position they undeniably find themselves in right now. Scheer’s argument is a mixture of right-wing claims that it’s somehow wrong for people to be paid well and a more interesting claim that unions brought these problems upon themselves by not cultivating enough public support.
The main problem with this argument is that it totally ignores the role of the right-wing, corporate union-busting machine in systematically undermining unions, especially public sector unions. Leaving that crucial piece of the story out of the op-ed makes Scheer’s argument much weaker.
Scheer starts by uncritically repeating the argument that public sector unions are overpaid:
Public unions’ traditional strength – the ability to finance their members’ rising pay and benefits through tax increases – has become a liability. Although private-sector unions always have had to worry that consumers will resist rising prices for their goods, public sector unions have benefited from the fact that taxpayers can’t choose – they are, in effect, “captive consumers.”
At some point, however, voters turn resentful as they sense that:
— They are underwriting, through their taxes, a level of salary and benefits for government employment that is better than what they and their families have.
— Government services, from schools to the Department of Motor Vehicles, are not good enough – not for the citizen individually nor the public generally – to justify the high and escalating cost.
It is no doubt true that some voters are turning resentful over these things. But it is not the fault of the public sector unions that this is the case. Public sector unions have consistently led the charge for better public services, from the DMV to schools. It makes as much sense to blame the teacher for the lack of funding for K-12 schools as it does to blame the call center staffer at Comcast for the company’s poor quality of service.
Not only is it the job of public sector unions to advocate for better pay and benefits, it is economically productive for all Californians when that happens. Those wages and benefits fuel economic activity, including private sector activity, creating many more jobs than if the wages and benefits were lower.
Those wages and benefits should act as a peg for the private sector to match, a rising tide that can lift all boats. In an era of deflation, we need to grow wages in order to get us out of a long-term recession and purge the debt.
Of course, big corporations don’t want that kind of race to the top. They much prefer a race to the bottom, where everyone has low wages and barely any benefits to speak of, at least that aren’t paid out of their own pocket.
To advance that cause, they have spent a truly enormous amount of money funding a massive attack on labor unions. This effort is multifaceted and very well thought out. It includes think tanks that create and deliver messaging against unions, legal firms that specialize in suing unions over even the slightest paperwork error, and of course, funding anti-union ballot initiatives and anti-union politicians.
That necessitated a response strategy on the part of labor – in both the public and private sector – that focused on the ballot and the state legislature here in California, in order to hold back that right-wing tide. Scheer criticizes this as well, but in the absence of any acknowledgement of the right-wing attack on unions, he makes it sound like a shift designed shut the public out:
But the unions switched strategies. Although the change was gradual, by the 1990s, California’s government unions had decided that, rather than cultivate voter support for their objectives, they could exert more influence in the Legislature, and in the political process generally, by lavishing campaign contributions on lawmakers. Adopting the tactics of other special-interest groups, government unions paid lip service to democratic principles while excelling at the fundamentally anti-democratic strategy of writing checks to legislators, their election committees and political action committees.
There’s nothing “anti-democratic” about this. Unions are democratic institutions, and are collections of thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of Californians. Unions aren’t some alien special interest working against the people of California – they are the people of California.
And when that message is delivered by unions, it resonates. Scheer claims that public sector unions have stopped “cultivating voter support for their objectives” since the 1990s, but that fails to explain the 2005 special election. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s right-wing proposals were crushed by the public sector unions, who came together and framed the initiatives as teachers, nurses and firefighters against what had been a popular governor. Californians responded very favorably to this messaging, agreeing that those vital public service workers did not deserve to be attacked in this way, and voted down all of Arnold’s proposals.
Not enough was done to consolidate that victory. Under constant right-wing fire, unions kept having to fight in courts and in legislatures to protect their workers. More needed to be done, and still needs to be done, to deliver pro-worker framing and messaging to the voters. But it’s difficult to do in the face of a well-funded right-wing onslaught.
It also doesn’t help when some large unions, like SEIU, decide to turn on their own union locals and destroy progressive power, as they did when they moved to trustee the United Healthcare Workers-West, a union that had done an excellent job using its organizing to build political activism.
Here in the depths of the recession, the public employee unions are indeed on the defensive, and certainly do need to explore new tactics. Some of them are already doing this. The California Federation of Teachers launched their March for California’s Future earlier this year specifically to generate and consolidate public support for teachers and public schools. The California Faculty Association has been very active in helping organize and support student activism on our college campuses. CFT has joined with AFSCME to help put an initiative on the ballot to restore majority rule to the budget process.
More needs to be done. And the unions seem to know that, and are beginning to respond. The California Teachers Association is perhaps the most important union in this regard. Despite widespread public outrage at K-12 budget cuts, and a total lack of public support for the radical experiments the so-called “education reformers” are trying to conduct on students, K-12 schools have been battered during this recession. And teachers’ unions are often used to justify these extreme cuts and unproven reforms.
CTA was perhaps the classic example of a public sector union that played the insider game. For many years they played it very well. But they also understood the need to mobilize the public, which they did in 2005. However, they need to spend a lot more time now cultivating public support for teachers, by stoking outrage at cuts and by mobilizing public reaction against the Wall Street-backed “education reform” movement, which is really nothing more than privatization in disguise.
That doesn’t justify Scheer’s argument, because Scheer ignored the fact that unions like CTA have very little room to maneuver in the face of a right-wing shock doctrine assault on public services, using public sector unions as a bogeyman to justify these unpopular cuts and unwanted reforms.
In California we’re already seeing labor reach out to progressive activists. The kind of labor/netroots coalition that nearly beat Blanche Lincoln can come together in this state in support of progressive candidates and to articulate progressive values and messages to mobilize the public to respond to the right-wing assault on all workers.
Such a movement is going to be increasingly necessary if we are to stop the slide into long-term recession and stagnation here in California. Unions are an indispensable part of progressive power, and a vital piece of our economic recovery strategy.
Voters are turning resentful over government worker union pension plans because they provide overly large payouts to a group of employees that have lower-than-average risk of layoff and demotion.
Voter anger is likely to grow ever larger as the gap between government worker pensions and private-sector retirement payouts (primarily social security and/or personal 401k savings) increases.
As an example, some workers in California obtain 90% of their final year’s salary with as little of 30 years of service. With favorable court rulings that include overtime and even some fringe benefits as “pensionable” wages, it’s not impossible to have a pension payout that exceeds final year base salary.
Why should the average hard-working taxpayer, who needs to plan for retirement on social security plus his or her own savings pay for the lavish lifestyle and carefree retirement of a government worker? Why can’t government workers get social security and start a 401k like the rest of us?
It’s an absurd assertion that these massive payouts raise the standard of living for average workers. The exact opposite is true: because overpaid government workers are less efficient (output per dollar is lower), the higher taxes these pensions require saps dollars from the pool that could be paid to private-sector workers.
This is going to be the defining economic issue of our times going forward. Thankfully, in a democratic system the majority still rules. I predict that voters are going to rein in and eliminate defined-benefit pensions in the coming years. Government workers should get social security and should have the same prospects for retirement as private sector workers. That would put them much more in touch with how the average working American feels about retirement.
These comments may not be popular on this particular blog, but I believe they represent the feelings of the vast majority of Californians.
This state will be reformed one way or another (see: redistricting and open primary votes). The CA electeds are not capable of doing it, so it’s up to the voters.
The decline in Private Sector defined-benefit pension plans coincided with the decline in private sector unionism. As public sector unions represent the majority of unionized workforce in today’s America, they have become the constant subject of derision in every corporate owned media outlet. Such message saturaturation has paid off as the “public” is demanding that we all race ourselves to the bottom of wages and benefits.
Public pensions represent an as yet untapped, locked up pool of cash that the investor class wants to get a hand on.
Public pension plans, and particularly the Cal PERs generally rely upon less than 20% employer contribution, but are primarily funded by employees and return on investment. (still represents the global gold standard as an investment vehichle). That’s not to say that PERs didn’t avoid the great economic hosing that all but a very few experienced in the late 2000’s. The administrative fees are about 1%. The investments are generally well diversified and sound. PERs has weilded it’s strength to demand change at the corporate level of many of it’s investments – and good on ’em!
401k’s subject the investor to high administrative fees which eat up a good deal of any return on investment. Many retirees (including members of my family) have had to come out of retirement – increasing competition for scarce employment opportunities – due to the erosion of funds in the individual accounts.
Lavish pensions – such as those for the already handsomely paid – such as UC and CSU administrators, Chiefs of Police and Fire, etc., could certainly be reigned in as the compensation for such positions creates great wealth during working years. Perhaps a cap of, say, $100,000 per year would be a good start. But to complain that a public servant should not be entitled to a decent retirement that is above poverty level, is to miss the bigger picture.
What is undeniable is the tremendous growth and concentration of great wealth. Why is there a sudden increase in the number of businesses that serve to preserve wealth by way of tax avoidance? Private bankning, and off-shoring wealth to reduce the amount of taxable income and return on investment.
The time has come for working people to look accross at each other with blame for the decrease in the standard of living that we were told we could expect through hard work and sound fiscal practices. It’s time we looked up at the investor class that has received all the upside of the economics of the last 30 years and demand that they start paying via progressive taxation, for the benefits that we all used to take for granted – an educated workforce, navigable streets and roads, access to the justice system, you know, all the stuff made possible because we, and our parents before us, believed that such things made for a stable society.
There’s a reason why we were the envy of the world, because one didn’t have to depend upon the luck of being born into wealth and privilege in order to live the American Dream, it was within grasp if one was willing to work. And it didn’t come at the expense of our friends and neighbors, but it did require that the highest paid be paid less than 400 times higher than the least paid worker.
Wealth inequality is the undoing of our once great state and nation. Pensions, and those who benefit from them after a lifetime of service, are what makes it possible for the aged to leave the workforce and free up positions for the young, job seeking workers who keep on coming. Those who call for the abolishment of pensions, instead of demanding equal security in retirement, simply do the bidding of the Corporatists who benefit from our emnity.
It’s time for working men and women to STOP blaming each other for the decline in our standard of living . . .
should’ve taken better advantage of the post oreview.
I have no problem with a public employee making a living wage, and even making a comfortable living as she accumulates seniority and/or promotions. I do object when they start getting lavish compensation.
The local paper recently did a series on government salaries, including a feature on the ten highest-paid in each city. The list was not comprised of the city manager and senior department heads; it was mainly police and firefighters at the line and supervisory level. When said employees are making $175-$200K a year, AND they retire at 90% at a comparatively young age, it’s no wonder people get ticked off. When I compare their salaries to those of a Marine sergeant in Afghanistan, I really get mad.
By all means, let’s support the rank and file public employees, but let’s not delude ourselves into thinking the whole system is worthy of our blind support.
Why use school teachers as an example?
I can’t think of a single time I’ve ever heard someone say that they thought school teachers were overpaid for the work they do.
When people talk about “overpaid” employees they’re usually talking about the police, firefighters, transit workers, DMV workers, etc.
People attack the California Teacher’s Union for wasting money and being inept, but nobody faults teachers for being “overpaid”.
As the author of the Op-Ed under assault, I thought I would join the fray. Robert’s critique is thoughtful (if a bit selective in the parts of my argument that he chooses to address). The comments are well-informed and interesting. This is exactly the kind of debate I was hoping to start.
I am a Democrat, perhaps even a “progressive” one. I am also not anti-union. I credit unions with the huge socio-economic achievement of transforming America from a majority working class, and poor, country to a majority middle class, and (comparatively) affluent, country. We’re beginning to see evidence of a labor movement in China which may accomplish the same feat in that country.
However, there are big differences between private sector unions and public sector unions. The former have (or used to, at any rate) real economic power: the ability, through a threatened or actual strike action, to insist on a greater share of corporate profits. With few exceptions, public employees have no such power. Many could strike for months without anyone noticing.
Private sector unions’ claim on corporate profits is based on productivity gains that create those profits. But the gains (in salary, benefits, etc.) of public employee unions are not tied to greater efficiencies in the delivery of services to the public. On the contrary, resistance to efficiencies is the norm.
Private sector unions’ success depends, ultimately, on their companies’ (and their industry’s) success in the marketplace. But the success of public sector unions increasingly depends on their ability, as a feared and powerful special interest, to manipulate government policy choices in their favor.
There is a difference, also, between union leadership and the rank and file. Union leaders in Sacramento are like bad generals–they are always fighting the last war. Most members are open to change in which they would accept greater accountability in exchange for more power, flexibility, and–yes–money.
On the issue of compensation, I do NOT think all public employees in CA are overpaid. Good teachers are underpaid. Some police and fire employees are overpaid, and I think they realize that. (E.g., on what basis should an average officer in a county sheriff’s dept be paid much more than an FBI field agent with comparable seniority?). Most government lawyers are way overpaid.
The real fiscal time bomb, however, is not about salaries, it’s about pensions and healthcare for retirees and their dependents. The fact is, these liabilities–which have been largely hidden to the public by union leaders and legislators–will bankrupt both the state and most local governments. As a society, we don’t have a choice about whether to make significant changes—in retirement age, benefit levels, employee contributions, etc. The only question is who will make them: the people, through an open political process, or federal bankruptcy judges?
I, for one, would like to see the Dem party in CA get out ahead of this issue rather than ceding it to the the Republicans.