FACT CHECK: Rauner Says AFSCME Highest Paid Workers in the U.S.
A now-timely cartoon in the UTNE Reader years ago showed a
grim-faced human resources manager behind a desk strewn with resumes and
looking down on prospective applicant in a small wooden chair sitting before
him.
HR Manager: You
will be given an unbearable workload, your colleagues will harass and abuse
you, any materials provided will be insufficient, there is no time off, you’ll
never find advancement, vermin will bite your ankles, and you get health care.
Applicant: Health care?
I’ll take the job!
So, what actually makes a job a worthy exchange for your
labor? Is it just the pay?
Novice Governor Bruce Rauner, who is girding up for his
forced strike with the 38,000 AFSCME employees would drew a line in the sand concerning
pay: “We have the highest paid state employees in America. We
need a fair system.”
We can debate the beginner Governor’s concept of “fair” later,
but do we really have the highest paid state workers in the country? That’s an interesting claim.
According to a recent American Enterprise Institute for
Public Policy released by Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine, the answer is “not
so much.”
The research “Overpaid or Underpaid? A State-by-State Ranking of Public Employee
Compensation” provides a detailed review of how the cumulative packages of
benefits, salaries, pensions, security, and sundry other elements add up in the
fifty states which utilize public unions to provide for the general welfare of
their people. It is clear from the onset
that “highest paid” is a vague and nebulously emotional term.
Take a moment to read along: https://www.aei.org/publication/overpaid-or-underpaid-a-state-by-state-ranking-of-public-employee-compensation/
According to the authors, to say unequivocally that one
state’s employees receive a higher or highest compensation is overly simplistic:
“The compensation premium is not uniform across the nation. Many states pay
government employees at market levels. Others pay huge premiums, and still
others fall somewhere in the middle. Because there are large differences from
state to state, broad generalizations and national-level analyses are not
especially useful to the policymakers who must make budgetary decisions for
their own states.”
Indeed, public sector workers like AFSCME in Illinois do not
hold a “highest” or even “most expensive” position in terms of workplace
benefits.
First, when we look directly at salary (Figure 1, p. 62) – as the
Governor would adjure us to do – we will find as we always suspected that the
dollar and cents premiums we provide our state workers fall significantly
behind those working comparable jobs in the private sector. Well, that is, unless you happen to reside in
Connecticut. Illinois does not lead the
way, but public sector workers in Illinois certainly fare better than our neighbors
in Indiana – a state that provides a model for Rauner’s Turnaround Agenda
demands. Indeed. There exists an almost
10% differential in Illinois wages in contrast to Indiana state employees.
But if you have job security (think tenure or due process),
doesn’t that move the advantage needle for workers in the public sector?
We find also Illinois still does not outpace other states. Note that in Fig. 13 – p. 74, “Total Compensation differential versus
comparable Private Sector Workers – Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania
lead the way in double digit numbers when contrasted with Illinois. We’re not only NOT the highest paid in
Illinois; public sector workers like AFSCME fall significantly behind other
states.
In another later graph, throw in the added value of “Job Security”
and those same states accelerate past Illinois, along with California,
Michigan, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.
Finally, when we look at the same data but add in the values
of a Defined Benefit, a Defined Contribution and/or a Pension, Illinois still
does not exceed other states (Figure 3 – p. 74) . In fact, the states in which public sector
employees receive a greater or same “integrated value for a year’s work”
include the following 19 other states: Arkansas,
California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana,
New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas,
Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming.
So, why the hyperbole?
Rauner’s long-standing beef
with AFSCME (which he refers to as
Af-Scammy) is not with their overpriced salaries, not at all. It is the simple fact that they are a union,
and especially a public sector union.
That is what aggravates him to blindness and pushes his administration
into an unrelenting refusal to negotiate with the leaders of AFSCME – no
different than with the state budget and the General Assembly.
The researchers went on to “show that state government employees in most states receive
greater total compensation than similarly educated and experienced
private-sector employees who work for large employers.
“Public-employee wages in nearly all states
fall below those paid in the private sector, but fringe benefits – in particular health and retirement benefits – are
significantly more generous in government than in the private sector. In
addition, public employees in every state have greater job security than they
would likely enjoy outside of government.”
As you may already know, Rauner believes the Illinois Labor
Board’s unanimous November ruling of an impasse in contractual talks between
his administration and the union renders additional discussion
unnecessary. Rauner expects only the implementation
of his “last” offer. “The time for talking is over.”
AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County, and
Municipal Employees) is seeking a court ruling, and has taken a membership vote
on a job action, receiving an over-80% willingness to strike.
Areas of disagreement included length of a work-week,
increased health insurance coverage costs, freezes in salaries for four years,
a merit pay system, and the administration’s plan to outsource work to private
companies competing with the workers’ union through competitive bidding.
In fact, reports indicate that Rauner and his staff are
working feverishly to identify replacement workers when and if a strike does
occur.
 |
| Executive Director AFSCME Roberta Lynch |
Executive Director of AFSCME Roberta Lynch is hoping that
her rank and file’s strike response to Rauner’s intractability will serve some
measure of incentive to the administration’s reconsider hammering out some
commonalities.
I personally hope a strike can be avoided, but it seems very
doubtful to me. Rauner is a man whose obdurate
leadership, or lack thereof, has veered a state through half a dozen investor bond downgrades
and an Everest of unpaid bills reaching beyond $12 billion. His non-involvement in the Senate
negotiations is an indication of his inability to lead, to embrace the
concept of compromise, and to the toxicity he brings to any civil discussions.
Like his current business counterpart in the White House, he leads
by generating conflict and crises.
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