Public worker unions are under attack across the nation, most notably in Wisconsin, where a group of Democratic State Senators have fled the state to stop a bill from being passed which would gut the ability of unions to bargain collectively for their members. I posted a link to this rundown from Ezra Klein in the Morning Links which really breaks down what’s at stake in this bill.
The rhetoric against public worker unions has been inflammatory–claims that public workers are living high off the labor of ordinary people have been effective in turning public opinion against public workers. But I’m a public worker, and a union member, and I make well below the median income for my area, so when I saw this headline (from which I stole the post title), I wanted to know just what the deal was. The results, if you’re a public sector employee, are not surprising.
“In 2010, median earnings of government workers who were union members were 25 percent higher than earnings of private workers.
However, two economists at the University of Wisconsin, Keith Bender and John Heywood point out that “government workers have jobs that demand more education, which is not accounted for by raw averages.”
Bender and Heywood did a study last year for the Center for State & Local Government Excellence, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, in which they concluded that “although a comparison of unadjusted average earnings will show that wages are higher among jobs in state and local government, this result is largely due to the fact that the workers in those sectors have more education.”
They said, “Holding education and other characteristics the same, typical state and local workers earn an average of 11 percent less and 12 percent less, respectively, than comparable private-sector workers.”
Which pretty much describes me and most of the people I work with, though I’d be excited if I only made 11% less than a comparable private sector worker.
What’s most disturbing to me about this whole situation is the way that powerful business interests and their allies in government have managed to turn public workers into the enemy, encouraging middle and working class people to turn on their own instead of looking to the people who are most responsible for the current economic problems–and the ones who should be required to make up the economic shortfalls in the form of higher taxes.
Wisconsin only has the budget problems it does–and they are minor compared to other states–because the legislature demanded huge tax cuts for the wealthy earlier this year. Working and middle class people shouldn’t be demanding that public workers take it in the teeth–they should be demanding better benefits both from their employers and from the state. I stand in support of the union members in Wisconsin and everywhere who are under attack and who are fighting for the rights of workers.
