The workings of the union/legislators complex

Public employee unions on the defensive

Peter Scheer

Sunday, June 13, 2010

For public employee unions - those representing police, firefighters, teachers, prison guards and agency workers of all kinds at the state and local levels - these are the worst of times.

Despite record high membership and dues, and years of unparalleled clout in state capitols, public-sector unions find themselves on the defensive, desperately trying to hold onto past gains in the face of a skeptical press and angry voters. So far has the zeitgeist shifted against them that on one recent weekend, government employees were the butt of a "Saturday Night Live" skit, and the next day, a New York Times Magazine cover article proclaimed "The Teachers' Unions' Last Stand."

Public unions' traditional strength - the ability to finance their members' rising pay and benefits through tax increases - has become a liability. Although private-sector unions always have had to worry that consumers will resist rising prices for their goods, public sector unions have benefited from the fact that taxpayers can't choose - they are, in effect, "captive consumers."

At some point, however, voters turn resentful as they sense that:

-- They are underwriting, through their taxes, a level of salary and benefits for government employment that is better than what they and their families have.

-- Government services, from schools to the Department of Motor Vehicles, are not good enough - not for the citizen individually nor the public generally - to justify the high and escalating cost.

We are at that point.

In California, government-sector unions, once among the most entrenched and powerful labor groups in the country, mainly have themselves to blame. For most of the postwar period, they were a force for progressive change, prospering by winning over public support for their agenda.

In the 1970s and '80s they backed laws like the Public Records Act and Brown Act to make state and local government more transparent. Because unions enjoyed broad-based political support, efforts to enhance government accountability and responsiveness to voters were seen - correctly - as benefiting the unions and their members. The public interest and public employees' interests were aligned.

But the unions switched strategies. Although the change was gradual, by the 1990s, California's government unions had decided that, rather than cultivate voter support for their objectives, they could exert more influence in the Legislature, and in the political process generally, by lavishing campaign contributions on lawmakers. Adopting the tactics of other special-interest groups, government unions paid lip service to democratic principles while excelling at the fundamentally anti-democratic strategy of writing checks to legislators, their election committees and political action committees.

While not illegal (in fact, such contributions are constitutionally protected), the unions' aggressive spending on candidates put them on the same moral low ground as casino-owning tribes, insurance companies and other special interests that have concluded that the best way to influence the legislative process is to, well, buy it.

Public unions' distrust of voters, and abandonment of government transparency as a union objective, could be seen in their successful push, in the mid-1990s, for a change to the Brown Act, California's open-meeting law. The new provision ensured that the public would have no access to collective-bargaining agreements negotiated by cities and counties - often representing 70 percent or more of their total operating budgets - until after the agreements were signed.

What happens when voters and the press have no opportunity to question elected officials about how they propose to pay for a lower retirement age, better health benefits for retirees' dependents, richer pension formulas and the like? The officials make contractual promises that are unaffordable, unsustainable and, in general, don't come due until after those elected officials have left office. In the case of Vallejo, this veil of secrecy and the symbiotic relationship it fosters led to municipal bankruptcy.

The biggest blow to unions' public support has come from revelations about jaw-dropping compensation and pension benefits. Police have received unwelcome attention for budget-busting overtime and the manipulation of eligibility rules for "disability pensions," which provide higher benefits and tax advantages. Other government employees, particularly managers, have been called out for "pension spiking": using vacation time, sick pay and the like to boost income in the last years of employment, which are the basis for calculating retirement benefits.

Such gaming of the system boosts starting pensions to levels that can approach, and even exceed, employees' salaries. Some examples from the reporting of the Contra Costa Times' Daniel Borenstein: A retired Northern California fire chief whose $185,000 salary morphed into a $241,000 annual pension; a county administrator whose $240,000 starting pension was 98 percent of final salary; and a sanitary district manager who qualified for a $217,000 pension on a salary of $234,000. At a time when most Californians anticipate an austere retirement (if they can afford to retire at all), government pensions are a source of real voter anger.

The harm to the credibility of public employee unions from these excesses is made far worse by the unions' attempts to hide them. The revelations about pay and pension abuses have surfaced only as a result of lawsuits. (The First Amendment Coalition has been a plaintiff in several of these cases.) Public employee unions, could have, and should have, taken the lead to stop abusive pension practices, which mainly involve managers and other senior staff. Instead, they have vigorously opposed disclosure of individual employees' salaries and pension amounts.

Public employee unions need to reboot. The old strategy of cynically buying political influence and excluding the public from decision making has run its course. Unions can rebuild public support by recommitting to an agenda of open government in the public interest. If they don't, they will be further marginalized.