Here’s the Real Problem with Public Employees

DISAPPEARING MIDDLE CLASS-Whether you first reach for the sports section or the business section of your morning newspaper, you can rest assured that the United States is doing well in the race to the bottom. But, if you are really rooting for the home team, I need to let you know that the US lead to the bottom would be greater if it were it not for the “pesky” public employees. 

But first, when it comes to this race to the bottom, let’s look at some measures of how the US compares to other leading industrial countries who are all part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 

When it comes to the minimum wage, the $7.25/hour minimum wage in the United States (as opposed to several cities, like LA, that have raised the minimum wage to an eventual $15/hour) is much lower than Australia, Japan, Canada, and nearly all countries in Europe. For example, in France the minimum wage, in US dollars, is $12.09. 

In contrast, the lowest paid LA City employee, a Vocational Worker I at the Department of General Services, makes $13.26 per hour, excluding benefits. 

When it comes to paid vacation days and holidays, the US is dead last among OECD countries. We are the only OECD country that does not require employers to offer paid sick leave and paid vacation days to employees. In contrast, the average OECD country offers about four weeks of paid vacation to all employees, along with eight paid holidays. 

As for LA City employees, they have 13 paid holidays per year, and they earn two weeks of paid vacation after one year of work. After five years, they have three weeks of vacation, which is still less than most other OECD countries, but far better than most other employees in the United States. 

What about paid maternity and paternity leave? In this category the US also stands alone among OECD countries. Our country does not require employers to offer any paid maternity or paternity leave. In Europe, however, the average paid maternity leave is for 15 weeks, with the UK offering 35 weeks. 

In contrast, LA City employees can have up to 18 weeks of maternity leave, but, to be paid, they must use accrued vacation and sick days. The City Council, however, is considering an ordinance that will improve this situation by granting paid maternity leave. 

Another critical event in the race to the bottom is paid sick leave. In this category, among OECD countries the US also comes in dead last. This is because we do not have any Federal legal requirement for paid sick leave. In California, however, employers must now offer at least three paid sick days per year. One could argue, however, that many companies and employers offer paid sick days, despite a lack of mandatory regulations, and you are right. 

In the case of sick leave, public employees across the board have this benefit, such as the two weeks per year available to LA City employees.  Furthermore, 60 percent of private sector employees have some amount of paid sick leave. But this also means that 40 percent of private sector employees in the U.S. do not have any paid sick days. If they are sick, they go to work or they lose a day or more in pay. If they have a serious illness, like cancer, they have no choice but to give up their jobs, unlike employees in other OECD countries, most of whom have 50 days of paid sick leave for serious illnesses. 

In response to these and similar statistics chronicling the race to the bottom, some commentators reply that LA’s derelict public infrastructure and public services are the price we pay for offering public employee benefits that are comparable to most other OECD countries. Just slash public employment and slash employee benefits if you want to restore public infrastructure and services. 

But this argument simply does not hold up to scrutiny. LA’s public employees are not responsible for potholes, shortened library hours, and poor enforcement of building and zoning codes. After all, they don’t submit and approve the City’s budget or prepare the work programs for each municipal department and agency. This is the job of the appointed General Managers and the management teams that they assemble, most of whom serve at the discretion of the Mayor. 

The real problem is that public employees, especially in large cities like Los Angeles, have managed to preserve their work place rights, the very ones taken for granted in all other democratic, industrialized countries, but not in the United States. 

This means public employees have binding labor contracts negotiated between democratically elected unions and democratically elected managers. As a result, they have job protection through both union contracts and through Civil Service. They also have the benefits discussed above, such as three weeks of vacation, two weeks of sick days, 13 public holidays, health insurance, paid overtime, cost of living adjustments (COLAs) to keep up with inflation, pensions, and deferred compensation programs. 

Considering that relentless attacks on employees in the private and non-profit sectors have whittled away or completely eliminated these rights in the United States, especially pensions, public employees have become the backbone of the declining middle class in the United States.  

This is why so many conservative think tanks and their dutiful pundits use public employee compensation as the false explanation for the budget woes facing state and local government in the United States. 

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In doing so, they conveniently ignore the real causes for under-resourced public sector agencies. Instead, they should factor in the following, all of which indicate that public employees are not responsible for the deterioration of public infrastructure and public services in the United States. 

• Since the second Nixon administration through President Obama, a period of over 40 years, Federal urban programs, such as Community Development Block Grants, have been steadily reduced. This is particularly ironic because in response to the Great Recession, between 2008 and 2010, the Federal government scraped-up over $12 trillion in bailouts for large banks and related financial institutions. 

• In addition to reallocating Federal dollars to Wall Street bailouts, national security expenditures, such as foreign wars, nuclear weapons, spying and surveillance, and homeland security, have soared through the roof, easily exceeding $1 trillion per year in recent years.  If some of these funds were redirected back to urban programs, where they likely originated, the resources that the City of LA could devote to the delivery of public services and the maintenance of public infrastructure would be substantially greater. In fact, these trade-offs are available for your review at The National Priority Project.  

• An additional factor that has left local government in California under-funded is Proposition 13.  Adopted in 1978 by California voters who assumed it would result in an economic windfall for homeowners, the real financial winners were owners of commercial real estate. Unlike houses, commercial properties are seldom sold, and therefore are seldom reassessed at current market rates. If these properties lost their Proposition 13 benefit, according to tax reform expert Lenny Goldberg, the California State treasury would have an additional $5 billion per year. 

When it comes to the “race to the bottom,” it is public employees who are slowing the rate of decline, even if they are not yet able to bring employees in the private and non-profit sectors up to their level.

 

(Dick Platkin is a former LA city planner who writes on planning issues for CityWatch. He serves on the Board of the Beverly Wilshire Homes Association and welcomes questions and comments at [email protected]. An earlier version of the article was presented at the recent LA Congress ofNeighborhoods.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams. 

-cw

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 86

Pub: Oct 23, 2015