- Basics
Public sector workers provide and support a wide array of public services—including education, public safety, waste management, health care, public transportation, and social services. They make up about 17 percent of the civilian, nonfarm workforce—a share that has actually dropped slightly since 1980. Public employees—like all other American workers—have been victims of the worst recession since the Great Depression. In fact, severe financial problems as a result of the Great Recession have forced state, county, and municipal officials across the country to make massive cuts in spending. As a result, tens of thousands of public‐sector employees have been laid off and thousands more have been subject to forced furloughs, pay freezes, and cuts in benefits.
To make things worse, public sector workers have also been unfairly targeted as a source of the recession and of the accompanying budgetary troubles. This has led—most notoriously in Wisconsin and Ohio—to broad-brush attacks on the public sector, and particularly on the freedom of public sector workers to bargain collectively with state and local governments. Such attacks rest on three false premises: that public sector wages and benefits rest on archaic, ironclad union contracts; that, as a result, public sector workers are overpaid; and that this “excessive” compensation is the source of state and local budget deficits. These common misperceptions are explored in the FAQ section (next tab) and in the research highlighted below.
- Current
The attacks, in the last legislative session, included significant efforts to roll back public employee rights in at least 30 states. These included a number of efforts to curtail collective bargaining rights; widespread changes to public employee benefits—including lesser pension plans for new hires, limits on state or employee contributions, and exclusion of benefits from bargaining; and focused attacks on particular occupations (especially teachers). The battle was starkest in a few states. In March 2011, Governor Kasich signed the Ohio’s new anti-collective bargaining law, prohibiting the state and state employees and state institutions of higher education and their employees from collectively bargaining over anything but wages, abolishes salary schedules for public employees, ends the practice of binding arbitration, and tightens the prohibitions against public sector strikes. After a spirited campaign in defense of collective bargaining rights, Ohio voters repealed the bill in November 2011.
In February 2011, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker ignited a firestorm with sweeping legislation that reduces the pay of public sector employees (from schools to state parks) while stripping away most of their collective bargaining rights (limiting the areas of negotiation to wages only, limiting negotiated increases in wages to the rate of inflation, banning deduction of union dues by employers, and requiring annual union recertification elections with a vote of more than half of the bargaining unit [not more than half of voters as is much more standard]). The legislation, originally on a fast track to passage was stalled by protests, absent legislators, and general resistance, was passed by the legislature, but voided by the courts for procedural violations. In mid-June 2011, the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s ruling—allowing the bill to become law.
- FAQ
Don’t public sector workers, unionized at a much higher rate than workers in the private sector, enjoy an undue bargaining advantage?
About 37 percent of public sector workers belong to a union. This far exceeds unionization in the private sector (now barely 7 percent), but the blame here does not fall on the public sector. A generation ago, about 40 percent of all workers belonged to union. Systematic attacks (in workplaces, in the courts, and in public policy) have contributed to a dramatic decline in private sector unions—and the security they once provided. But this discrepancy is a poor argument for extending that misery and insecurity.
Are public sectors workers overpaid?
No. There is now a large body of research (see “Learn More” that shows that public-sector workers actually earn less than their private-sector counterparts. The argument that public-sector workers are overpaid seems to stem from simplistic apples-to-oranges comparison that neglects to factor in important differences—education, experience, citizenship, hours worked—between the public and private sector.
- Learn More
The Economic Policy Institute has published research on a range of states (including New Jersey, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin) demonstrating that public-sector workers are not overcompensated. The Demos initiative on The Role of Government and the Public Sector offers a broader defense of public services and public employment. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the AFL-CIO’s American Rights at Work project, are a good sources for current state-level battles. For strong and eloquent defenses of public sector workers in states where the attacks have been fiercest, see Amy Hanauer, Ohio: A New Kind of Battleground, and The Center on Wisconsin Strategy, Wisconsin’s Public Employees.
