Since 2005 the pay (wages plus benefits) for state and local government workers in the U.S. has increased five percent, while compensation for private sector workers has remained flat. That extra five percent isn’t exactly peanuts:
State and local governments pay more than $1 trillion in compensation annually (actually, that’s an astounding number–I had no idea it was that high). If compensation is 5% higher than it should be, that’s $50 billion in excess pay costs for the state.
Not only does this $50b of mandated excess generosity on the backs of the taxpayers add up, it adds up rather nicely:
Lo and behold, that $50 billion would roughly cover the total size of the state budget gaps. For example, in February a survey found that the combined budget gap of all 50 states was $55 billion for the 2011 budget year and $62 billion for the 2012 budget year.
Why, it’s as if there’s a solution in there somewhere…
Exaggerate!
bob c- their wage INCREASES are two to three times that of the private sector. Their benefits and pensions are at least twice and more that of the private sector.
Yes, for that amount of money, I do conclude that these govt workers provide zero QUALITY (not quantity) service. So – there are indeed roads but the quality of the roads is abysmal; the water treatment plants are inadequate (and we know this from the many ‘boil-water’ advisories in small towns); the public transportation is, as I’ve noted, inadequate, overpriced and with key requirements (cleanliness, escalators, elevators) filthy and broken.
Bureaucratic services in govt offices are staffed by bored, indifferent staff, each one of them giving different and contradictory replies to questions – if you can even get hold of them. Complaints and questions online aren’t answered or, again, answered with contradictory views.
As for those 21 ticket collectors who earned over 100,000 this was due to overtime. What kind of business has so much overtime available? Is it all those sick days that other employees take off? How can a business get away with reimbursing those ticket collectors – that’s an unskilled job – with such salaries? That means that they are paying these 21 these bloated salaries while also paying all the others who are taking off ‘sick’! That’s our money.
So, yes, I am saying that ALL of these services could be provided with better quality and less expense to the taxpayer. By moving them to the private sector and rejecting monopolies and unions.
Now, bob c, grow up and stop the insults. I have absolutely no intention of responding to any insult. My work experience and my income is none of your business. Stick to the issues and don’t move into insults.
ET I have a question for you with most governments around the world bankrupt and are in such dire straits that they are now simply kicking the can down the road for someone else to fix.
What is the endgame here or is there one. Is this just governments with what appears to be no accountability run amok or something else going on here, a deliberate plan to destroy the world economy. Even printing presses can only go so far before inflation is so massive as to make currency useless.
It is an issuer I have been pondering for awhile now with no satisfactory answer.
Keep on digging Bob C, another few shovelfuls and you might get near a clue, but not likely!
ET’s right on her take of the public service unions. Two of them (with exceptions, to be sure) can do the job of one good non-union worker- at three times the cost! -my words, not hers.
In their time, the unions had their place and were guided by honourable ideals, but over time they became infested by the radical, lazy activist whose objective was to not only perpetuate their phoney-baloney jobs, but to also see how much they could scam for the least amount of commitment. If it’s not manipulating overtime, bogus sick days, or some grievance crap, it’s ‘study’ days or some new-fangled ‘in touch, feely’ seminars, etc. etc.
It’s no wonder they’re being viewed in such low esteem and with distain by today’s public.
But hey, it’s Jacko’s raison d’etre and it floats his boat.
ET;
Grow up yourself ET. If you don’t like insults directed at you then stop handing them out yourself which you have done here today with a number of broad brush comments directed at government workers in general terms. I’ve dealt with my share of bad ones over the years to be sure, but also with quite a number of good ones.
You did not talk about wage “INCREASES” being two to three times higher in your 9:44pm post. No misdirection plays please. You said, “Because their wages, benefits and pensions are two to three times that of the private sector” which was an outrageous and completely untrue statement. If you’re taking it back then fine, but don’t try to imply that you didn’t say it in the first place. You did.
Snagglepuss;
I’ve worked for both government and private industry. How about you. And if you haven’t, what makes you think you know so much.
Jeff, you’re right about governments “kicking the can down the road” – a perfect description – for someone else to deal with. There is no endgame, though, in the sense of any deliberate plan to destroy the world’s economy. The truth is a lot more straightforward than that: over the years people have been increasingly voting for governments to provide them with entitlements and services that they themselves don’t pay into. Put differently, a politician or a party who campaigns on a promise to greatly raise taxes, and to slash services, public sector wages, pensions, health care, etc. simply won’t get elected.
A lot of countries, particularly European ones, are simply running into the limits of democracy. A couple of days ago I saw some in-the-street interviews with some protesting Greeks. It was *disturbing* how unreasonable they were. They didn’t see any connection whatsoever between the country’s massive, completely unsustainable debt and imminent bankruptcy, and their demands, which caused the whole mess.
Just…mulish and dense to the nth degree. Innumerate, illogical, and enraged. Tough crowd for any politician.
Snagglepuss;
One other point. What is the management to labour ratio in private business as compared to government. If you don’t know, then you haven’t the first clue as to where the problem lies.
bob c- nice try but your need to defend your unionized public service years obscures the facts.
I’ve stated them. The wages, benefits and pensions of the public sector are two to three times that of the private sector. Wage increases alone in the public sector are twice that of the private sector; benefits and pensions are two to three times as high.
It wasn’t one ticket collector, as you claimed, to get over 100,000 but 21. That’s for a totally, completely unskilled job. No taxpayer should have to pay that amount for those lack of skills. OK?
The quality of service is absymal from the public sector. Not quantity – we know they are busy, busy, with meetings and papers to consult and write and discuss; we know that it takes three people to do the task of one. We know that.
And your attempt to suggest that the cause of these bloated incomes and lack of service is ‘management’ is a dead end.
The cause is the lack of accountability of this service, which is a monopoly; this means that bad service has no bad results; the customer can’t go elsewhere.
The next cause is the lack of tying this service to income. In the private sector, bad service means no income. In the public sector this link is broken.
A third factor is the existence of the unions, which have become corporations focused only on their own income. Since their income is not tied to providing satisfied customers but comes from taxes, the union gets greedy and the focus becomes a public service devoted to an elite set of workers. It has lost any interest in providing good service to the public. It no longer needs the public.
The workers, who no longer need to serve the public, become focused on only one thing: how to get as much money, benefits, pensions as possible while doing as little service as they can. OK?
Bob c, ET is exactly right on public sector unions. The recent strike in Ottawa Transit was purely over the WORKERS demanding control of their schedules so they, as was stated by transit operators, could book off sick and alternate with their buddy so they could work the double shift at double time.
Remember with public unions there is no bottom line. Throughout this recession teachers, transit workers or garbagemen continued to receive raises.
One TTC ticker taker who made $125,800 was arrested for stealing from the fare box. Greed knows no bounds. Toronto bylaws require a police officer at every road construction site, they do nothing but stand there at $67 an hour.
As is happening in Ontario with its 1,000,000+ public employees with their powerful unions, over 67,000 made 100k+, and every country/state/province you want to look at, like Greece or the UK, government spending on government is destroying them. Read Parker Gallant’s articles on Ontario Hydro in the NP, consumption is down but costs are rising purely due to staffing and wages. In today’s NP they are predicting a 20% rise in our electricity charges.
The 3 public unions in California have almost absolute control of the dying state.
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_california-unions.html
An excerpt:
“Blame Vallejo’s politics, dominated by public-sector unions, for the city’s sorry fiscal situation. “Police and firefighter salaries, pensions and overtime accounted for 74 percent of Vallejo’s $80 million general budget, significantly higher than the state average of 60 percent,” reported a 2009 Cato Institute study. The study highlighted a shocking level of enrichment: pay and benefit packages of more than $300,000 a year for police captains and average firefighter compensation packages of $171,000 a year. Pensions are luxurious: regular public employees can retire at age 55 with 81 percent of their final year’s pay guaranteed, come hell or a stock-market crash. Police and fire officials in Vallejo, as in much of California, can retire at age 50 with 90 percent of their final year’s pay guaranteed, including cost-of-living adjustments for the rest of their lives and the lives of their spouses. And that’s before taking advantage of the common pension-spiking schemes that propel payouts even higher.”
ET statement that she made a while ago is so true. “When an organization gets a union the focus changes from the customer to the employee.”
ET;
There you go again saying something completely untrue. “The wages, benefits and pensions of the public sector are two to three times that of the private sector.”
I refer you to Jim Horne’s post at 8:10am on May 5th in which he quotes a study by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, hardly apologists for public sector unions. The money quote; “Municipal employees earned 11% more in wages than their private-sector counterparts. When benefits were included, they earned 36% more than private-sector counterparts.”
Got that ET. 36% more, not 100% or 200% as you continue to insist on saying. Are you just willfully trying to distort the facts or is math not your strong suit.
I will not put up one word of argument if you take the position that 36% more is unreasonable. That’s a perfectly valid opinion. I most certainly will though if you keep on insisting on the 100%-200% falsehood.
I also will not argue about whether the hourly wage paid to TTC ticket collectors is reasonable. My argument with you on that score is that you seem to want to walk down both sides of the street at the same time.
On one hand, with a very broad brush you paint any and all government workers as lacking any decent work ethic. In the next breath you castigate a small number of ticket collectors making 100k a year, people who only could have made that amount by working PRODIGIOUS amounts of overtime.
Which is it ET. Lazy people lacking a work ethic or money hawks who will bust their humps to try to make any extra dollar they can. They’re contradictory characterizations. You can’t make both at the same time. Pick one and stick with it.
Last but not least, you completely misunderstand my comment about management to labour ratios. In the private sector it is about 1 to 9. At the time Mike Harris was amalgamating the city it was 1 to 3. I’m not exactly sure what it is today, but it isn’t a whole lot better.
That is one rock that critics of government never want to or think to look under. You should give it some thought if you’re really interested in reducing the cost of government.
Dave;
Nowhere on this thread have I taken the position of defending unions. All I did was take exception with some over the top, inaccurate and contradictory statements by ET on the subject.
As far as I’m concerned
Dave;
sorry. Accidently hit the post button. Allow me to add to the last incomplete sentence. It should have read, As far as I’m concerned, if unions haven’t run their course of usefullness, they’re very close to it.
bob c- I’ve had plenty of direct experience in private industry, and, being negatively impacted by unions.
My not having worked for government is irrelevant— as, for example, you don’t need to work in the service or retail sector to know when you’re not getting value for money, to see where workers are slacking off, or that the service is lousy. Mere observation and first hand encounters can tell you that.
Additionally, in the case of public sector unions, examining readily available information/data can further bolster one’s conclusions.
I stand by my comments.
Snagglepuss;
Thanks for the comment. As I said in a post just above, I have nowhere here defended unions. I perfectly agree with your comments and those of others, including ET. What I have taken exception with is some over the top statements that are neither accurate nor fair.
As to my comment about management to labour ratios in government as compared to the private sector, you would be wise to give it some thought. What do you want your taxes to pay for, a whole lot of highly paid bosses and relatively few workers, or fewer at the high end of the pay scale and more lower paid workers that actually deliver a service.
As I said, when Mike Harris amalgamated the city of Toronto in the late nineties, the ratio was one to three. I am not aware that the ratio is much different today. Private business is about one to nine. You’re a smart guy. Do the math.