NEA boss has it backwards when he claims that America cannot have a middle class without unions. Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, America’s largest union, claims, “In actions more fitting for comic book arch-villains, a new crop of state leaders have launched blistering attacks on working families disguised as budget and...
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed limits on public employee collective bargaining—and Republican election victories in November more generally—have uncorked a backlog of opposition from the left to criticisms against public sector unions. More complete responses to that opposition will follow this post (though Ezra Klein has already kicked out the legs from under his own...
While attention focuses on the battle in Wisconsin between a Republican Governor and public employee unions who overwhelmingly support Democrats, it is in California where the future role of public sector unions in politics is being most severely tested. Because in California, Democrats exercise nearly absolute control over the state’s political agenda, and as a...
Editor’s Note: Given the sensitive nature of the conclusions herein, and based on informed criticism from many who commented and emailed in response to this post, a 2nd, more in-depth analysis was posted on this topic on Feb. 11th, entitled “What Percent of California’s State AND Local Budgets Are Employee Compensation.” In that more thorough...
In response to New York Mayor Seeks Pension Overhaul; New Jersey Governor Tells Unions “Sue Me” Over Pension Cuts I received yet another email stating a line I frequently hear, that some occupations are “special” and need protection. Here is the exact statement: “I think that teachers are special and must be separated out in...
The fact that pension finance is a relatively poorly understood area of employee compensation doesn’t let us off the hook to try to understand it. Certainly policymakers should have had a better understanding of what they were getting taxpayers into. During the bubble years of the internet and continuing right up until a couple of...
Gov. Jerry Brown is coming into office with a lot of highly publicized and some praiseworthy activity, as he pushes ahead what he calls an honest budget, free from the usual gimmicks, and makes cuts in his office budget, cell phone use by state employees, redevelopment agencies and so forth. I praise him in my...
U.S. House Resolution 6484, the “Public Employee Pension Transparency Act,” will finally require public employee pension funds to adhere to the same regulations that govern private pension funds. The reason for this is clear enough – by not reporting sufficient information about the financial status of these massive funds, there is greater potential for them...
Labor luminaries such as George Meany and FDR agreed on the dangers of a unionized government. More recently, prominent Democrats such as California’s former assembly speaker Willie Brown, or current San Francisco supervisor Jeff Adachi, have found themselves criticizing or confronting public sector unions. The reason is clear – private sector unions must be reasonable...
When the governor’s pension adviser, David Crane, comments on a pension issue, it’s wise to listen to what he has to say. Crane has long been sounding the alarm about out-of-control public-sector pensions, and his testimony in the Senate regarding a failed pension reform effort captures the problem more succinctly than anything else I have...
As the U.S. began the process to stem the spending flood last Tuesday, it seemed that New York and California remained isolated and perhaps determined to drown in its own fiscal flood waters. The titles of articles on the subject are all you really need to know. The Two Left Coasts in the Wall Street...
Despite candidates backed by public sector unions pretty much running the table in the statewide elections – they retained virtually every State Assembly and State Senate seat and among higher office, and only the Attorney General race still hangs in the balance – at the local level there were significant gains by union reformers. A...
When assessing the financial sustainability of any government administered plan to provide retirement security to their citizens, it is important to consider two factors, (1) the nation’s overall population demographics, and (2) the economic model of the plan. In-turn, when evaluating the economic model of the plan, it is important to consider the plan’s sustainability...
On August 4th an interesting analysis of public sector compensation was posted on the blog Inflection Point Diary entitled “How to Figure Out How Much Money a Local Government Manager Makes.” In this decidedly conservative analysis, the conclusion was that “real annual compensation at least 33 percent higher than the ‘salary’ the city would have...