the public sector class war

It is all "greedy unions," "extravagant benefits," "unaffordable pensions," and "shared sacrifice." The corporate media are encouraging people to resent the benefits of civil servants rather than the big bonuses paid at Goldman Sachs, to disregard the re-distribution of income from the bottom upwards, to ignore the fact that fewer Americans have a bigger slice of the pie than ever before.

Are teachers really that well paid? Do health care assistants really have platinum-plated pensions? Do fire fighters really have "overly generous" health benefits? There are countless tendentious manipulations of the private vs. public sector compensation data by corporate-backed think tankers out there. That's what they get paid to do. Simply looking at public vs. private pay averages is deceptive.Governments do not have many minimum-wage jobs, whereas the private sector offers at least 10 million of them. Government work forces tend to be older and better educated, and thus better paid. The private sector generates temporary jobs that tend to be lower paid, part-time and without benefits (80 percent of the jobs created by the private sector in November are temporary). Governments generally produce positions that tend to be more secure, full time and with good benefits. There's no doubt that most small businesses do not offer health benefits as generous as those found in government, if any at all.

One study of federal government vs. private compensation for nearly 600 comparable positions found that civil servants make 20 percent more on average. But again, averages are often deceptive. Another study, which adjusted for the variables of age and education, found that pay for local and state jobs is about 7 percent lower than in the private sector. Look at the pay for physicians, IT types, engineers, lawyers and other professionals in the public sector. It can be half or less of what one finds in the private sector. Compare public employee benefits to those for staff at large firms (500 or more employees), the benefits are nearly identical.

What about pensions? The fundamental issue is the difference between defined-benefit plans (prevalent in government jobs) and defined-contribution plans (e.g., a 401k, the standard in most of the private sector). The former promise a certain monthly pension check, the latter leave you at the mercy of Wall Street. Defined-benefit plans clearly cost employers more than defined-contribution plans. That explains why 85 percent of private-sector workers do not have them.

Gone are the days of life-long employment at a single firm with good pay, adequate benefits and a guaranteed pension. Welcome to the era of temporary, deskilled, part-time jobs with few benefits and a lousy pension. Workers witnessed the deliberate restructuring of America's private sector work force; government employees are next.

Taken from here
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