Wisconsin's Unions: Bleeding Taxpayers Dry

for the past 30 years, government workers have enjoyed far bigger pay increases and far more lavish benefits than people who work in the private sector.

For government to give, it must first take.

This is why governments impose taxes, fees, and fines. Before government can give anyone anything, it must first take something from someone else.

It’s important to remember that as we watch government workers who’ve shut down the Wisconsin state capitol to protest proposed changes to their health insurance, pension benefits, and collective bargaining rules.

The reaction of government workers in Wisconsin and other states where governors are beginning to stand up to government unions shows they do not understand or don’t care that for them to have jobs, people who do not work for government have money taken from them.

Several decades ago government workers typically received lower pay but more lavish health insurance, earlier and bigger pension benefits, and greater job protections such as tenure for teachers.

But for the past 30 years government workers have enjoyed far bigger pay increases than people who work in the private sector. And as the benefits of government workers have become even more lavish, those for private-sector workers have been reduced.

Last year the Bureau of Economic Analysis released data showing average compensation in the private sector was $59,909 in 2008, including $50,028 in wages and $9,881 in benefits. Average compensation in the public sector was $67,812, including $52,051 in wages and $15,761 in benefits.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures things differently and shows an even bigger gap: Total compensation per hour of $39.66 in the public sector versus $27.42 in the private sector in June 2009. That’s a 45 percent total compensation advantage for the public sector. The public sector enjoyed a 34 percent advantage in pay and a huge 70 percent advantage in benefits.

This BLS compensation gap is bigger because it measures by hours worked instead of simply total pay and benefits. Full-time private-sector workers averaged 2,050 hours of work annually compared with 1,825 hours for government workers.

A favorite canard of government worker apologists is to claim government jobs cannot be fairly compared to private-sector jobs and that today’s government workers need more education than typical private-sector workers and therefore should be more highly compensated.

But how’s this for an apples-to-apples comparison: teachers.

We have public schools, private schools, and parochial schools. Virtually everywhere, teachers in the public schools have higher total compensation than their local counterparts in private and parochial schools.

We can break teachers into subsets of teaching areas if you’d like to drill down farther. Which driver’s education teachers do you think receive higher pay, more lavish health insurance, and richer pension benefits—the ones who work for your local high school district or those who work for the local private driving school? Hey, you guessed right!

The first decade of this century saw the slowest economic growth of any decade since the Great Depression. Millions of private-sector workers have lost jobs, but government workers have barely been touched in comparison.

Millions of other private-sector workers have seen their pay frozen or cut and benefits cut, eliminated, or made more expensive than ever. In local and state governments, by contrast, workers have continued to receive pay raises and lavish pension benefits, and they continue to pay relatively little or nothing for health insurance and other benefits.

And all of it—the jobs, the pay raises, the pensions, the health benefits, the sick days, the workers compensation insurance, the paid vacations—all of it, every penny of it, comes from the private-sector workers who earn less, receive fewer benefits, and have almost none of the job protections that government workers enjoy.

I hope government workers who read this might understand why things cannot continue as they have these past few decades. Government workers are bleeding the rest of us dry.

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