Big Labor is Smaller Than Ever

In 1974, nearly 25% of all U.S. workers were unionized. Today, it’s barely one in ten. (See graph below from Big Labor? by Matthew Di Carlo, of the Shanker Blog).

Di Carlo’s piece begins with a discussion of the stalled federal legislation to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration, a Republican monkey wrench that is costing the nation $30 million per day in lost tax revenues. He points out that the cause of this dispute is an attempt to deny private sector railroad and airline workers the right to be in unions.

Work Is A Debilitating Disease

Image by GDS Infographics

I was visiting a friend recently and noticed a sphygmomanometer on his dining room table. “My blood pressure is really f’ed up,” he said.

This guy is in his early 40s, a nonsmoker, not overweight, exercises regularly, or at least he used to. Now he has no time to exercise at all, and little time or energy to spend with his family. On top of that, he’s only sleeping a few hours a night because of the stress at work.

“Work’s been kicking my ass, lately,” he explained. “There’s nothing I can do to satisfy my boss. She has me going to meetings on weekends, giving presentations at night, managing a bunch of other people, but with no authority if they flake out or bumble. It always comes back on me.”

Work, The Silent Killer

His working conditions are not unlike those of millions of others. He works far more than 40 hours a week and has little control over much in his work environment. If the boss says jump, he knows he must, or risk losing his job, yet he can never jump high enough, fast enough or long enough to get a break, compliment, raise or promotion. He also has no union or grievance policy at his job. On top of that, he has a family and mortgage that depend on his income, so he can’t simply quit, which makes him feel even more trapped and at the mercy of others.

Few people ever experience kidnapping, yet most of us experience some lack of control at work and in life, in general. The effects on the body and mind are similar, particularly because that sense of being boxed in and helpless can continue for a lifetime. It causes the overproduction of the stress hormone cortisol, which speeds up the heart, impairs memory and the immune system, and can lead to hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Those of us with low or medium status jobs often find that we have multiple bosses who sometimes give us contradictory orders. Teachers, especially, often find themselves in the position where they are expected to follow Ed Code, and state and regional laws that conflict with each other, and balance the competing demands of administrators, parents, departments and professional integrity. However, the degree of control at work tends to be proportional to one’s income and job status. The lowest wage workers have the least control at work and, not surprisingly, the poorest health outcomes. People of color also tend to have worse health outcomes and stress due to both overt and subtle forms of racism they experience on a daily basis. For example, each time someone gets eyed suspiciously in the store or on the street can cause their cortisol levels to rise.

The data above comes from the Unnatural Causes video website. I highly recommend this video series. 

Work, The Noisy Killer

Of course work does not just kill people slowly and quietly by aggravating their stress and their hypertension. People also die and get injured pretty regularly while on the job. In 2009, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 965,000 workplace injuries serious enough to force people to stay home from work, including 379,000 sprains, strains and tears, and 195,150 back injuries. There were 4,551 deaths on the job in 2009, 4090 of which occurred in the private sector, which should tell us something about the logic of allowing the private sector to police itself.

Union Busting Through Safety Violations

Workplace injuries occasionally happen because of worker carelessness or because they were inebriated. However, the majority of workplace injuries happen because bosses do not maintain safe workplaces and equipment. They ignore safety regulations, fail to upgrade or repair damaged equipment, or speed up production to unsafe rates. They do this to increase profits and workers often accept it as a fact of life. Unions sometimes accept these practices as a quid pro quo for not laying off more employees. However, this is a mistake that trebly harms workers. First, it increases the chances that someone will die or be injured on the job. Second, speedups increase profits for the bosses, yet these profits are almost never passed down to the worker in wages, bonuses or comp time. Thus, workers are risking their safety entirely to make their bosses wealthier, and getting nothing in return and they are facilitating the demise of their own jobs as speedups reduce the number of employees necessary. Third, speedups and dangerous working conditions increase fatigue, stress, anxiety, making it harder to get workers to meet outside of work to discuss their plights, organize, and fight back.

Relax, Public Pensions Are Fine!

Why all the sturm und drang around public sector pensions? Like most crises that get conservatives’ panties in a bunch, the crisis around public sector employee pensions is not a crisis at all. It is yet another attempt to squeeze workers so that the rich don’t have to pay any more taxes.

Teacher Robbing State of Pension Benefits (image by smithco)

Average state public employee pensions can continue paying benefits at their current levels for another 13 years, even with the assets currently on hand and even with no increase in contributions. In California, the pensions are good for 15 years. The contributions to these plans amount to just 2.9% of state spending (according to the National Association of state Retirement Administrators) or 3.8% (according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College). This is more or less in line with the private sector, where employer contributions to employee pensions come to approximately 3.5% of employee compensation. The difference, of course, is that the state contributions come from taxes, whereas in the private sector, these costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Also, many of the public sector pensions are guaranteed, while private sector pensions sometimes get raided by their bosses and then go belly up.

There are, of course, problems with the public sector pensions, but being broke is not one of them. It is true that they are underfunded, but not because workers are holding out on them. They are underfunded because the value of their holdings has declined along with the rest of the stock market. This would only be a problem if every single worker retired at once, which is not likely to happen. Furthermore, this problem will correct itself over time, assuming the economy recovers. It is also a problem that could be rectified with a bailout or by fining the crooked bankers and speculators who caused the meltdown. However, these are absurdities that are silly to even mention. The system is run by and for the rich. They are the ones who get bailouts, subsidies and tax breaks, while we are the ones who pay for them.

Another lie that has been perpetuated about public sector pensions is that while the private sector has lost jobs during the recession, the public sector has somehow miraculously grown, along with its pensions. In reality, state and local governments have lost 703,000 jobs since December 2007, when the recession started, while pension benefits have remained flat.

There is also a misperception that public workers don't contribute to their own retirement funds the way private sector workers do. There are four states in which this is the case: Florida, Utah, Oregon and Connecticut. Missouri and Michigan used to have non-contribution policies, while Arkansas and Tennessee have non-contribution policies for a small segment of their public employees. The vast majority of states do require employee contributions that range from 5-8% of their pay. Private sector employees do pay a little more, but only slightly (8.2% on average for plans administered by Fidelity, the largest administrator of private-sector plans). However, what is really notable is that most private-sector employers match up to 50% of employee contributions.

So relax, billionaires and millionaires and ranting pundits. Teachers are not ripping you off.

Newspaper to Publish Teacher/Public Employee Compensation

The Bay Area Newsgroup (publisher of the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune and San Jose Mercury News) will be publishing an online database that will access compensation data for all public employees in California, including teachers.

This is not illegal, but it is intended to be provocative, particularly in this climate of public employee bashing. In recent attacks on public employees, critics have said we are overpaid, which is simply not true. When making honest comparisons, where public and private sector employees have the same job title, experience and level of education, public employees make LESS than public sector workers.

Myths About Public Employees

Why Do They Hate Teachers?

Bill Gates by Dunechaser

The attacks on teachers and their unions just keep coming. While the Bill Gates, Eli Broad and Arne Duncan crew are clearly seeking to make public ed look bad so they can replace it with profitable private education schemes, the attacks are also part of a broader assault on all public sector workers, who are among the few remaining unionized workers in the country.

The ruling elite would love nothing more than to destroy all vestiges of unionism in this country and they have done a pretty good job at creating the impression that public sector workers are all a bunch of spoiled babies who are bilking taxpayers and bankrupting local governments, thus pitting workers against workers. See Working Class Hostility Toward Jersey & Philly Teachers.

Photo by BrianR

Labor Notes recently published an article dispelling many of the myths about public employees. To read the full story, visit Labor Notes: Public Employees: Myths and Realties. Some snippets from the article appear below.

Government Employees are Overpaid

Economic Policy Institute found that public workers earn about 11% less than private sector workers, when compared by age, experience and education. Public workers did have better benefits. However, when health and retirement were included in the total compensation package, public workers were still paid 4% less than their private sector counterparts.

The Federal Deficit is Out of Control

There was virtually no spending or job creation in the private sector. Therefore, government spending was the main force for creating the few new jobs that were created last year. However, there is plenty of fat in the federal budget, primarily in the military, which takes up 22% of the total budget, more than double what it was 10 years ago.

Taxes Are Too High

Taxes in the U.S. are the 3^rd lowest of all industrialized countries (only Turkey and Mexico are lower). Corporate taxes are also among the lowest. At the end of WWII, more than 1/3 of all taxes came from corporations. Today they pay only 10%. Also, the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest Americans was 81% in 1940 (and over 90% from 1950 to 1963) compared with 35% today.