Are Wisconsin public sector workers overcompensated?

“Are Wisconsin public sector workers overcompensated?”

Compared to what?

The amount the current politicians are willing to pay them? Apparently so.

According to supply and demand? On other threads we’ve been told that people line up for public sector jobs. Apparently so then.

Compared to private sector workers, apparently not.

Plenty of room there for everyone to make their own definitions.

“When comparing public and private sector pay it is essential to consider the much higher levels of education required by occupations in the public sector. ”

Well, yes, although there’s been not a little forcing here. There’s long been attempts to insist that public setor workers should be highly qualified (on paper that is) because that’s a justification for higher pay.

and here too.

If every job people line up for is overcompensated, then pretty much everybody is overpaid, and no job is underpaid, by definition.

Indeed, while that ought to be a reduction-to-absurdity in any sane universe, it’s actually just a recapitulation of the standard argument for eliminating the sinister socialist plot device of ‘minimum wage’ and for rolling back all those worker-protecting, productivity-destroying regulations.

Of course, my dad (and at least half the public-sector workers in WI that I knew through him) worked in the public sector for less pay because he felt like he was contributing to Good Things. What fascinates me is how unambiguously callous people can be in their willingness to demand that we exploit that desire to do good, i.e.: public-sector work pays less, therefore people who go into public-sector work are do-gooders, therefore we should pay them less because they’re not motivated by money and will work for peanuts anyway, out of do-gooderism. So we should refuse to offer above-poverty compensation for public-sector work because public work is moral, and poverty is moral, and anyone sanctimonious enough to work for the government ought to be taught a lesson about how tough the real world is (but they should be happy to be taught that lesson and live in poverty, because they must be a do-gooder type — why else would they go into lower-paid work?)

Public-sector workers get confused with priests.

I’m not sure how this works:

“Full-time public employees work fewer annual hours, particularly employees with bachelor’s, master’s, and professional degrees (because many are teachers or university professors). ”

I think this whole “professors don’t work many hours and they have summers off” bullpucky needs to be put to bed. I am a full-time faculty member, and when I compare my annualized hours to those of my private-sector friends I see that I work far longer hours. I average about 70 hours/week during the school year and about 40/week during the summer. Finally, my salary is far less than those who work fewer hours, and is shamefully less when you control for the amount of schooling I invested in so as to reach this position.

I suspect, but don’t know personally, that K-12 teachers also work far harder than most of the public gives them credit for.

“Has anyone ever studied the extent to which small businesses are subsidized by public sector health benefits?”

Dean Baker (EPI at the time again I think?) has pointed out that the US has a much lower (surprised me too) small business formation rate than many other places. He thinks it’s exactly that, the lack of state paid health care, which explains it. Dropping out of a large corporation means giving up decent health insurance: unless, as you point out, you’re getting it elsewhere in the family.

Although the cynic within me would posit that *public sector* spouses running the bars might have more to do with having friends in the licence and sanitation departments…….

What government workers do have is somewhat more security than private sector workers. And that is of course intolerable. All workers should be just as insecure as day laborers are today, so they are, how shall we say it… well behaved and properly motivated.

Way back when – say 2005 – the standard argument was that public employees were paid less than their private-sector counterparts, but that they had more job security. Which when dilated upon by conservatives was taken to mean that those in the public sector weren’t heroic risk-takers and also obviously of less-than-average qualifications. Obviously: they were avoiding competing in an arena where they were sure to lose. Never mind that job security in and of itself is a good thing or that there can be other motivations than monetary remuneration.

Now in 2011, that old conservative spin is no longer operative. No, it’s not that those incompetent risk-averse cowards made an intelligent decision to go for security as opposed to a shot at the golden ring. No, now it’s “Why should they have those benefits those in the private sector lack?”

The fact that this position amounts to reneging on the original deal (shades of GM employees being forced to give up benefits that were negotiated in good faith and which they had already paid for) is studiously not discussed. As in 1984, the past is busily being reinvented for the masses. No sanctity of contracts for them!

So, if declining revenues are a legitimate reason to unilaterally break a contract, am I allowed to unilaterally change the amount of money I owe the bank on my house since my wife lost her job and I took a pay cut last year? Similarly, is it OK for me to pay the convenience store less for a gallon of gas since we are making less money?

We constantly hear how families must make do with their budgets, but it seems to me that we are not allowed to just refuse to pay the prices that others are demanding. In the case of public employees, the government even agreed to those prices.

@Holden Pattern
What fascinates me is the tendency of people to say “Why do those people get something I don’t have?” instead of “How can I get what they’ve got?” The movement conservative politics of spite are impressively successful.

The subtext: “why shouldn’t public employees be as underpaid as almost everyone else?”

Undoubtedly Gov Walker is simply trying to improve the productivity of the workforce, and, ya know, get some useful work out of the lazy bums:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/02/but-i-thought-union-busting-solved-all-educational-problems

Do not laugh, Tim, that’s what my dad did.

Difficult to see that as an an argument that a policy that results in that is a bad thing….
(Harry’s dad becoming a head-teacher, that is, not Tim laughing.)

(For the mystified – which may include Harry himself – his Dad was my Dad’s boss for a while – and the only person he worked under that I ever heard my Dad speak highly of.)

If unions and taxes are major obstacles to economic growth you would expect South Carolina et al. to be the economic power houses of the nation.

Funny you should say that; When I lost my job in Michigan a couple years back, where did I find a job? In South Carolina. It was a close thing, though, I had another job offer pending in Kentucky.

Why not tell the protesters to ask the taxpayers to accept tax increases to cover the cost of their wages and benefits? That would be analagous to asking buyers of consumer goods to pay more for increased wages for the workers who produce them. The results can be seen on every highway; more non-union made autos.

Here’s a simple way to think about Wisconsin, and beyond:

Suppose that an economy is built with the services of two groups of workers: let’s call them Teachers and Bankers. When choosing jobs at the start of their careers, Teachers say that they aren’t fans of lots of risks. They will accept lower current compensation (salaries and bonuses), but they’d like job security, and they’d like a good pension in retirement.

Bankers say they’re very comfortable with risk, provided they have the chance to earn high rewards for bearing this risk. They want lots of salary and bonuses as current compensation; they may save some of this to fund their retirement, and they’ll take their lumps (pink slips) if they don’t perform.

For a while, things run pretty well: Bankers do lots of clever financial engineering and earn large salaries and bonuses, Teachers educate their own and Bankers’ youngsters and check off the years before they retire.

Then – Oh Noes! The financial engineering comes unstuck, and the Bankers lose lots and lots of money. The Humanity! Fortunately, as we know, the Bankers had accepted that with reward comes risk, so they cheerfully prepare to shoulder much lower salaries and bonuses for a while, and the Teachers carry on as before, educating the young ‘uns and getting closer to a comfortable and well deserved retirement.

Or do they? It seems I’ve left out a group of people – let’s call them Organizers – who are responsible for Making Some Rules and seeing that Rules Are Followed. And as far as I can make out, the Organizers are convinced that everyone will be Very Badly Off Indeed if there are fewer Bankers in the labor force, and if Bankers’ current pay and bonuses are sharply reduced. So the Organizers do their level best to see that Bankers don’t feel too despondent about losing all that money, and arrange things so that more money is made available to Bankers. The Bankers feel that the Organizers aren’t as gracious as they might be about these arrangements, but they still feel honor bound to keep accepting big salaries and bonuses.

Meanwhile, even though the number of young ‘uns needing to be properly schooled and socialized hasn’t gone down at all, some Organizers feel that the right response to the Bankers losing lots of money is that Teachers should Step Up To The Plate. Yes, these Organizers say, we did agree that you should have security and a good retirement, and you’d take much lower salaries and bonuses along the way. But be good sorts and contribute for the Public Good: and no, we can’t retroactively raise your salaries in compensation for taking back the things you’d counted on.

Who do you think you are, anyway. Bankers?

Back in the real world, South Carolina is one of the poorest states in the union. It’s also seen below-average economic growth.

Funnily enough, the greatest agglomeration of rich people I have known in the U.S. come from Boston, NYC area, DC-Virginia-Maryland, and Bay Area. None of them business-friendly areas by the normal standards.

Suppose that an economy is built with the services of two groups of workers: let’s call them Teachers and Bankers. When choosing jobs at the start of their careers, Teachers say that they aren’t fans of lots of risks….

The analogy fails because it leaves out the Wal-mart workers and the auto workers.