Public paychecks scrutinized in Ohio union fight

JULIE CARR SMYTH

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Wildly con­flict­ing esti­mates make it dif­fi­cult to deter­mine how pub­lic and pri­vate pay com­pares in Ohio, and mil­lions are flock­ing to new online salary tools to peek at the salaries of government-paid friends, neigh­bors and politicians.

Bit­ter salary wars — over how much pub­lic work­ers are paid, for what, and by whom — are a key ele­ment in the debate over a new col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing law signed this spring.

The union-limiting mea­sure is fac­ing a nation­ally watched repeal effort that cul­mi­nates Tues­day. The law appears on the bal­lot as Issue 2. It was signed by Repub­li­can Gov. John Kasich this spring has fueled a $30 million-plus bal­lot fight over the bar­gain­ing abil­i­ties of 350,000 police, fire­fight­ers, teach­ers and other gov­ern­ment workers.

Back­ers have sought to enlighten vot­ers on the pay and ben­e­fits under­writ­ten by tax­pay­ers, in reports and TV adver­tis­ing pit­ting gov­ern­ment work­ers against “the rest of us.”

Oppo­nents have fought back by empha­siz­ing Kasich’s own $148,000-a-year salary, raises awarded to state leg­isla­tive staffers in the midst of state bud­get cuts, and the pub­licly funded com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages owed to law­mak­ers who backed the union limits.

“How does Joe Tax­payer put these num­bers into any con­text?” wrote David Hamann in one of about 50 com­plaints Repub­li­can Ohio Trea­surer Josh Man­del received after his pub­lic salary search tool was posted in August. “Seems that is an essen­tial part of the equa­tion to pro­vide any thought­ful, intel­li­gent, and unemo­tional dis­course sur­round­ing this topic.”

For vot­ers, such con­text has been hard to find.

The Ohio Busi­ness Round­table, which wants to see the new law retained, com­mis­sioned a study that found that pay, ben­e­fits, promised pen­sions and a dol­lar value researchers assigned to job secu­rity meant pub­lic work­ers have a 43-percent com­pen­sa­tion advan­tage over their private-sector counterparts.

An analy­sis of the same ques­tion by the Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute found that public-sector work­ers are actu­ally slightly under­paid com­pared to work­ers in the pri­vate sec­tor, when com­par­ing sim­i­lar posi­tions and con­sid­er­ing the higher edu­ca­tion lev­els required of the aver­age pub­lic worker.

The Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics reported the national wage-plus-benefits aver­ages in June were $28.13 per hour in the pri­vate sec­tor and $40.40 per hour in the pub­lic sec­tor. But the fed­eral agency strongly cau­tioned against comparisons.

“Com­pen­sa­tion cost lev­els in state and local gov­ern­ment should not be directly com­pared with lev­els in pri­vate indus­try,” warned the bureau in a Sept. 8 report on employer costs of employee com­pen­sa­tion. “Dif­fer­ences between these sec­tors stem from fac­tors such as vari­a­tion in work activ­i­ties and occu­pa­tional struc­tures.” The pri­vate sec­tor is heav­ily weighted toward man­u­fac­tur­ing and sales, while most gov­ern­ment jobs are in sup­port occu­pa­tions, it said.

Any private-sector salary aver­age takes in every­one from the $7.50-an-hour McDonald’s cashier to the $2 million-a-year NFL player. By con­trast, nearly half of all pub­lic sec­tor work­ers have 4-year col­lege degrees, and a large per­cent­age also have grad­u­ate degrees — facts that drive up that sector’s salary average.

Tout­ing com­par­a­tive aver­ages can serve to dehu­man­ize gov­ern­ment and bring out people’s most neg­a­tive emo­tions, said Michelle Pautz, an assis­tant polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Dayton.

Based on her review of almost 20 years of gov­ern­ment por­tray­als in pop­u­lar films, Pautz said the pub­lic gen­er­ally views gov­ern­ment in a neg­a­tive light, but indi­vid­ual employ­ees more favor­ably. Take the Bat­man films, she said.

“Government’s bad. Why else do we need Bat­man? I mean gov­ern­ment can’t pro­tect its cit­i­zens,” she said. “But yet you have dis­trict attor­neys and you have Com­mis­sioner (or Lt.) Gor­don who are try­ing and who are work­ing hard and some­times sac­ri­fic­ing their fam­i­lies and their own well-being to serve the public.”

Good­will toward indi­vid­ual work­ers can evap­o­rate if you find out they’re mak­ing more than you, though.

The con­ser­v­a­tive Buck­eye Insti­tute began gath­er­ing and post­ing pub­lic salaries in 2010 to sup­port its push to rein in gov­ern­ment spend­ing. Pres­i­dent Matt Mayer said the insti­tute wanted to draw atten­tion to the data because school dis­trict and local gov­ern­ment costs are dri­ven largely by payroll.

Brian Rothen­berg, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the lib­eral pol­icy group Pro­gres­sO­hio, said tech­nol­ogy has made such data easy to post — but it is sub­ject to inac­cu­ra­cies and mis­un­der­stand­ings. Mandel’s office has had to cor­rect exist­ing data and change the way it presents some num­bers in an effort to improve accuracy.

“It is an attempt to pit worker ver­sus worker, an attempt to cre­ate resent­ments in many ways,” he said.

Impli­ca­tions that Ohio tax­pay­ers and pub­lic work­ers are sep­a­rate groups also aren’t quite accu­rate. Gov­ern­ment data indi­cate pub­lic work­ers con­tribute about 15 cents of every dol­lar paid in Ohio state income tax.

Inno­va­tion Ohio, a lib­eral pol­icy think tank, has also pub­lished salaries and ben­e­fits data — of law­mak­ers who sup­ported the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing law, as well as Kasich’s staff. Those reports cap­i­tal­ized on vot­ers’ neg­a­tive feel­ings not only toward gov­ern­ment in gen­eral, but toward politi­cians in particular.

The labor coali­tion AFL-CIO has long made avail­able com­pen­sa­tion data on CEOs through its Exec­u­tive Pay­Watch project. Through the site, Ohioans can learn that the aver­age CEO in Ohio made $5.2 mil­lion last year, for exam­ple, while the median income was $32,150 and the unem­ploy­ment rate was above 9 percent.

Offi­cials at unions cam­paign­ing to defeat the law can also be well paid.

Ohio Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion exec­u­tive direc­tor Larry Wicks earned $210,858 in salary and dis­burse­ments last year, accord­ing to reports filed with the U.S. Depart­ment of Labor. He is one of 10 exec­u­tives at the teach­ers’ union whose base pay exceeds Kasich’s. The high­est paid exec­u­tive at the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of State, County and Munic­i­pal Employees-Council 8 is pres­i­dent John Lyall, fed­eral fil­ings show. He made $153,000 in 2010. Oth­ers unions back­ing the repeal reported no salaries over $100,000.

Posted by AP News on Nov 2 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.