Buffalo News, March 15, 2011, Tuesday

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Buffalo News

March 15, 2011, Tuesday

N.Y. State workers facing benefit envy; Private-sector employees' anger over perks for government jobs may hit pay, pension


OK, it's not Wisconsin, Ohio or New Jersey.

But even here, in union-friendly New York, government workers are feeling the brunt of public scrutiny.

And with the spotlight comes a fair amount of anger and resentment over benefits that many private-sector workers will never see.

"It's a bad time to be a public employee," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "There's been nothing but bad news."

Of course, it could be a lot worse for New York's government workers. They could be in Wisconsin, where law-makers voted to strip public employees of much of their collective-bargaining rights.

Or in New Jersey, where the governor is proposing workers pay a much higher share of their health insurance premium.

In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo avoided the urge to gut bargaining rights and focused instead on adopting a wage freeze and a series of pension reforms.

"People in New York are reasonably sympathetic," said Carroll, who has tracked public opinion about government employees in the state. "They don't want to throw them out into the street.

But a wage freeze? Yes, absolutely."

To make his case, Cuomo has gone on the road, and, whether it's Buffalo, Rochester or Binghamton, he is quick to remind the public that New York can no longer afford the wages and benefits its workers were promised.

Ultimately, his goal is to rally public support for givebacks and create what one expert calls benefit envy.

"How can these people get all these gold-plated benefits? -- that's the rhetoric," said Joseph E. Slater, a professor of labor law and history at the University of Toledo.

At its core, the debate is: Why should public-sector workers get a sweet deal -- all of it at taxpayers' expense -- when private-sector workers often go without?

Fueling the debate is an economy that has left most private-sector workers struggling to make ends meet and politicians eager to exploit the lack of comparable benefits for those workers.

"They look at the benefits of public employees and their own benefits, and they're jealous," said Arthur C. Wheaton, director of labor studies at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Buffalo.

Wheaton and Slater are quick to note that, while government workers enjoy better than average pension and health care benefits, they tend to earn less than private-sector workers doing the same job.

Nevertheless, government workers are viewed as among the best-compensated employees in the nation, much like unionized auto and steel workers 50 years ago. "They're the new elite," David Gregory, who teaches labor and employ-ment law at St. John's University, said of public employees.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms what Slater, Wheaton and Gregory suggest -- public-sector workers enjoy better benefits but earn lower wages.

Government, when compared with private business, spends about 1.7 times as much on health care per em-ployee-hour worked and nearly twice as much on retirement.

The opposite is true of wages. Private-sector managers and professionals made an average of $34.91 an hour as of last September, compared with $33.17 an hour for public-sector professionals and managers.

"No one is going to get rich working for the government," Gregory said. "The fact is, government workers have historically traded income for better benefits."

Even among experts who think changes are needed in government benefits, there is a sense that unions bear an un-fair share of the criticism for what public employees now receive from their employers.

"It's easy to demonize the unions, but elected officials deserve just as much of the blame," said David M. Primo, associate professor of political science at the University of Rochester.
"Politicians need to look in the mirror because they're just as complicit in the problem."

Primo's point is that management, in this case governors and legislators, are as much to blame for the huge budget deficits in New York and elsewhere as organized labor.

They, after all, are the ones who negotiate labor contracts, approve pension increases and refuse to change laws that stand in the way of employee givebacks.

"These rules were not created by unions," Primo said. "They were created by politicians."

In New York, state labor law includes an aspect known as the Triborough Amendment. It ensures that public-sector benefits and pay remain intact unless the two sides agree on a new contract.

Historically, unions have been criticized for Triborough's existance, but the State Legislature and the governor keep it on the books. And the reason is the influence of public-employee unions in Albany, much of it rooted in their cam-paign contributions to lawmakers.

Slater thinks pensions are the best example of how the public's perception of government-worker unions is based on rhetoric, not fact.

"The most common misconception," he said, "is that unions are responsible for the underfunded pension crisis."

His point is that, yes, there is evidence that government retirement plans are underfunded to the tune of about $3 trillion, but the reasons are not excessive benefits.

The same studies that document the underfunding usually blame it on governments skipping or low-balling their annual payments to the pension fund. Others cite the 2008 stock market crash.

Wheaton is quick to note that New York's public-employee unions have a history of negotiating pension conces-sions, most recently last year with the creation of a less-generous Tier 5 plan. Some experts expect Cuomo to propose a Tier 6 for new employees.

"I think they need to share in the burden," Wheaton said of the unions, "and I think they're willing to do that."

The question is whether that will be enough to stop the public's growing envy over what many see as excessively rich benefits for government workers.

In short, will the "benefit envy" end?

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
e-mail: pfairbanks@buffnews.com

GRAPHIC: Working for the state [GRAPHIC - see microfilm]

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