On Saturday, Ron and I went to another Budget Repair Bill rally at the Capitol, and it was the biggest protest yet. At least 70,000, and maybe even 100,000 people showed up! It was incredible, a mass of humanity surrounding the Capitol Square, pouring into the streets and down the side streets, loud and exuberant and angry and energized.
Just a few thousand of those present were Tea Partiers staging a counter-protest in support of the bill, but their tiny rally got much of the press. They were gathered mostly on one corner of the Capitol, surrounded by a line of police forming a loose barrier between them and the mass of other protesters.
Ron and I asked the police if we could cross that line. They said yes—the separation was just precautionary. So we ventured across and waded into the crush of Tea Party bodies.
Along with many other anti-bill protesters, we were making an effort that day to show the Tea Partiers that we’re not the horde of violent rioters portrayed on some conservative news stations. We struck up many conversations with them, mostly friendly.
Talking to Tea Partiers was eye-opening.
From talking to them, I learned that there’s a disconnect in conversations around this bill. We all care about workers’ wages and benefits, but we frame that value differently depending on which side we’re on.
The Tea Partiers wanted to talk about their own wages and benefits compared to those of public employees. They perceive an unfairness of paying “too much” in taxes that support public workers. They didn’t seem to care about unions per se; they weren’t into talking about concepts like worker rights, solidarity, or the right to unionize. They just wanted to talk about fairness and taxes.
Ron and I had a version of the following conversation with several different people, mostly middle-aged white men.
Us: Thanks for being here. We’re actually against the bill, but we wanted to say welcome.
Tea Partier: Oh! Well, thank you. Everybody has the right to be here. …So, are you teachers?
Us: No, we work at the DNR. We’re Limited-Term Employees. We’re not unionized, but we’re here in support of the unions.
TP: Well, this is really all about the budget. We’ve got a problem, and Walker’s got to do something about it.
Us: Most of us here are here because of union-busting, more than the budget.
TP: Well, I’m here because I don’t want to pay for your pension and health care.
Us: We each brought home under $20,000 last year. We’re not exactly living high on the hog.
TP: But how much do you pay for your health care?
Us: About thirty-four dollars a month, although under the original bill, we would have lost coverage altogether.
TP: Know who pays for my coverage? Me. Know how much I pay? Twelve hundred a month. (Or six thousand a year for one man’s family plan.)
Us: That is a lot. But how much do you make?
TP: $31,000.
Us: So you’re struggling, too. It’s tough times for everybody. It seems like after your health care payments, we bring home about the same. But it’s not really about all that. We just want more time for this kind of dialogue, instead of pushing the bill through so quickly. And we don’t think unions have very much to do with the budget. But we’re probably never going to agree; we just wanted to welcome you.
TP: Well, thanks.
These conversations were enlightening for me despite being so brief. I felt that, in a way, we were talking past each other even though we were touching on the same topics.
One thing was clear: I had more to learn about the differences between public and private sector wages and benefits. Ron and I clearly weren’t making a lot, but in general, I still wanted to know: were government workers overpaid? I wanted more numbers.
Everyone has an angle.
Just as I’d discovered when researching the budget crisis, I found that sources with different slants reached differing conclusions about this issue.
A great article in the Washington Post highlights this phenomenon of bias. Post writer E. J. Dionne (who of course has his own bias!) describes the way a chart in the Wall Street Journal misleads by showing that government workers are better paid than those in private industry.
According to the Journal, state and local government workers make $26.25 cents an hour, compared to the $19.68 an hour that workers in private industry average. This chart clearly feeds the narrative that public-sector workers are—depending on you point of view— “better-paid” or “overpaid.”
But, Dionne, goes on, The New York Times has “a more subtle chart that tells the real story.” It’s true that workers without a bachelor’s degree are better paid in the public sector, he says—$37,000 vs. $33,250 annually. But private-sector workers with a bachelor’s degree earn more than those working for the state: $57,113 in the private sector vs. $51,921 in the public sector.
I think it’s interesting that Dionne’s “real story” is still biased, as though it’s insignificant that workers without bachelor’s degrees are paid more by the state. But he still makes a fair point!
He goes on to argue his case for unions this way:
Does that mean that less-educated workers in the public sector are “overpaid”? I have to say that I find it pretty outrageous for well-off conservatives to say that…people earning $712 a week are “overpaid” and ought to be making only the $639 a week that comparably educated private-sector workers make. I’d argue it the other way around: the problem…is that private-sector wages for people at the bottom of the income structure are too low relative to everyone else’s… You could also say that unions…lift the pay and benefits of the least well placed in our society, and that this is a social benefit.
Are public employees overpaid?
After doing more reading, here’s what I’ve found so far:
Nationwide, the average government worker makes more than the average private-industry worker: $26.25 per hour vs. $19.68 per hour, respectively (as Dionne says above).
And in Wisconsin, the average state worker makes more than the average private-industry worker: $37,000 per year vs. $33,250 per year, respectively (as shown in the New York Times chart).
However, around 60% of Wisconsin public-sector jobs require higher education, while only 20-30% of private-industry jobs do. According to the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute:
These stark educational differences arise for two reasons. First, many public employees are professionals and teachers in positions that require higher levels of education. Second, the movement to privatize public sector work has been accomplished in great part by moving low-skilled work from the public to private sector, where benefits are often more modest.
When comparing wages in jobs across similar education levels, public-sector workers make less. In Wisconsin, private-industry workers with bachelor’s degrees make $57,113, as shown in the Times’ chart. Their public-sector counterparts make $51,921—9% less.
(The Economic Policy Institute says Wisconsin public-sector employees earn 4.8% less than their private-industry counterparts. That’s different from the above figure, but it’s still less.)
Are public employees overpaid when factoring in benefits?
Public employees’ health insurance and pension benefits tend to be more than those of private-sector employees. But even after factoring this in, the overall compensation for public workers is still less than for private-sector workers across the same education levels.
Before factoring in benefits, public-sector workers earn 11-12% less than their counterparts with the same education. After benefits, they still earn around 7% less.
The Reason Foundation, a libertarian organization, draws this conclusion:
According to the analysis, state government workers earn an average of 11.4 percent less than private-sector workers of similar education and work experience and local government workers earn 12.0 percent less. Due to the greater benefits received by public sector workers, the gap narrows when these benefits are factored in, to 6.8 percent and 7.4 percent, respectively.
I hadn’t researched all this at the time that we talked with the Tea Partiers. If I had, I might have asked them what their education was. I would guess those making around $31,000 a year had only bachelor’s degrees or perhaps even only high school degrees. When factoring in our benefits, Ron and I make similar to the amount many of them make—but we both have master’s degrees.
Sympathy for the Tea Partiers
All my reading added a great deal of nuance to my understanding of things. I now have a better handle on the facts and numbers. In some ways, I feel more confident than before in my stances.
All along, I’ve felt it was unfair for Walker and his allies to be demonizing state workers and implying that we’re overpaid, when so many of my colleagues drive used cars and have to spend modestly in their daily lives. The numbers confirm that we’re not overpaid, and that in fact, we’re generally compensated less well than the people attacking us for being overpaid!
But at the same time, some of the articles I read added nuance to the Tea Partiers’ perspective too. In a blog post, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos describes the difference between wages and benefits in the public vs. private sector, then writes:
Just because public-sector workers make less than private sector workers doesn’t mean that all is peachy keen in the private sector. Public sector jobs are much more stable, and while numbers of public-sector jobs have increased steadily nationwide despite the recession, private-industry jobs have plummeted.
Along these same lines, The Reason Foundation talks about the huge difference in job security in the two sectors, for better or worse:
Government job security is famously, and notoriously, ironclad, oftentimes making it practically impossible to fire or lay off public-sector workers for the same reasons employees are terminated in the private sector, even in cases of poor performance or unethical activity. This job protection has tremendous value…
Unlike the private sector, where decisions on the number and compensation of employees are driven by supply and demand and economic realities, the size and cost of government employees is driven by the political process.
Thus, government employees’ labor unions are constantly pressuring legislators…to increase workers’ wages and benefits, and legislators are always creating or expanding government programs that may or may not be needed or effective. [G]overnments at all levels [have continued to] add employees even during the severe recession…. Between December 2007 and December 2009, the private sector lost more than 7.3 million jobs, yet the number of government jobs actually increased by about 100,000… It should come as little surprise, then, that taxpayers are upset as they watch government union ranks swell as their governments face serious budget strains and private businesses and households have been forced to cut back to adjust to economic conditions and live within their means.
I dislike the language used in this libertarian article, characterizing public employees as “government union ranks” and implying that they’re not also “taxpayers.” But still, I think the article makes some good points.
Public workers generally make less than private-industry workers in similar jobs, even after benefits, but government jobs are more stable—one reason it’s worthwhile to work for the government despite the lower pay. Private industry has suffered more in the recession than the public sector. That has increased bitterness and frustration among people in private industry towards workers in the public sector.
I can understand that bitterness, even though I think it’s displaced. The real problem isn’t public employees—it’s scarcity of jobs and income. It’s the recession. The people we should really all be angry at are the bankers.
Talking to the Tea Partiers was worthwhile.
The rally was exhilarating, and talking to the Tea Partiers was a challenge and a highlight for me. I don’t get to speak very often with people outside my worldview and culture, and the conversations were a jumping-off point for me to learn more. Now I have a more educated and nuanced perspective.
This is why I value dialogue so much. I hope to have many more such conversations in the future.
Great summation of the wage & benefit comparisons public vs private. There have to be some cutbacks on numbers of public sector employees as part of a general reduction of government services in order to balance budgets. But those employees who remain on the government payrolls are obviously not taking the taxpayers to the cleaners. One thing that I’ve noticed is that conservatives have a history of favoring a strong defense and being hawkish. But once the soldiers retire, the conservatives don’t seem willing to provide the quality health care and benefits that were promised during the soldier’s time of service. I think the the same thinking is happening with the attitudes toward public sector pensions. Was that part of the original plan when the government agreed to paying lower wages in return for promises of providing better benefits and good pensions. And now they want both low wages (in fact, LOWER wages), and lower benefits and pensions too? Disingenuous & conniving at best, perhaps even mean-spirited.
I am a retired government employee, and there is one criticism of the public sector which needs to be mentioned, because it explains some of the negative attitudes toward us. As a consumer of public services (federal, local and state), there are too many government employees with a bad attitude about providing the services they are paid to perform. There is rudeness, disrespect, with-holding of information, incompetence, etc. I have seen numerous government workers say and do things that would get them fired in the private sector, but the union rules frequently protect these poor performances, resulting in low accountability. It would help if there were more accountability within the public sector. The great majority of public employees do their jobs exceptionally well, but the few bad eggs stink things up for everybody.