The National Education Association, which is America’s largest labor union and the smaller American Federation of Teachers, which together control so much of our education system, put out the message that education is underfunded in America and our teachers are underpaid. In reality, we spend more than almost any other nation on our children’s education. And the average salary for our public school teachers is significantly higher than the median average personal income in the United States, not even taking into account the extensive vacation time and the better-than-average benefits that teachers receive. By asking us all for more money for education, the teachers unions try to shift the blame for our failing K–12 education system from their shoulders to our own.
Final Frontier
This is an America run by the government employee unions. And it’s only getting worse.
After World War II, over 35 percent of workers in the private sector were union members. Today, private sector union membership clocks in below 7 percent.28 To keep the money flowing and their coffers full, labor unions have had to seek out new frontiers.
They’ve found their frontier—it’s our government.29 In this book, you’ll learn how unions now hold power over our government workers at the federal, state, and local levels. You’ll learn how these unions are destroying our rule of law and free elections, you’ll find out why Obama is the perfect partner for government employee unions, and you’ll learn how the teachers unions control America’s classrooms in all fifty states. You’ll discover what it’s like to be a member of a government employee union—what the union does for you and what it does to you. You’ll also learn why government employee unions spend so much of their dues income on politics and about the corruption and coercion within the unions themselves. You’ll find out what’s coming next—how their ultimate goal is to make you a member of a government employee union, with or without your permission, and how they intend to stop any politicians or groups that oppose them.
You may recall the philosopher’s stone, the elusive substance that was believed by the ancients to be able to turn metal into gold. For the labor unions, it’s no myth: government employee unions are the philosopher’s stone, turning government employees into gold for the labor union movement. All they have to do is continue to mobilize the net “pie” recipients to support their agenda and elect their candidates.
For the past half century, they’ve been winning. Unions’ power and privilege has always ratcheted up, never down—“toward greater union power, never less.”30
Our job is to reverse that pattern.
As President Ronald Reagan wrote in 1985, “Someone must stand up to those who say, ‘Here’s the key, there’s the Treasury, just take as many of those hard-earned tax dollars as you want.’ ”31 If there has ever been a time in our history to stand up for the American taxpayer against government employee unions, it is now.
Let’s get started.
CHAPTER 1
Meet the Shadowbosses
The scorpion wanted to cross a river, but he was a poor swimmer. So he begged a nearby frog for a ride across the river.
“Why would I let you ride on my back?” the frog responded. “You are a scorpion and surely will sting me.”
“If I were to sting you,” the scorpion replied haughtily, “we’d both drown, since I can’t swim.”
The frog saw the logic of the situation and agreed. The scorpion crawled aboard the frog’s back, and they started across the river.
Halfway across, the scorpion stung the frog.
As the paralyzed frog began to sink, he turned to the scorpion, bewildered. “Why would you do that?” he asked. “You fool! Now we’ll both drown.”
“I am a scorpion,” the scorpion answered. “It is my nature to sting.”
And they both drowned.
TODAY, we’re the frog. Government employee unions are the scorpions. If we allow them to stay on our backs much longer, they will sting us and we will all drown. And, like the trusting frog, we’re letting them.
Government employee unions should be expected to do what these unions do—demand more and more from our government until they bankrupt our nation and us. And our job is to refuse them. It is up to us to save our poor nation from the scorpion’s sting that we all know is coming in the middle of the river.
Public Servants Become Public Masters
Two generations ago, there were public-minded government servants. Most government employees took real pride in their work. Their common goal was to build and staff a government that served the people well.
Before government employee unions came on the scene, government employees understood that service meant sacrifice in terms of pay. Sure, you wouldn’t get rich working a government job, but you’d have a lifetime job with a good pension at the end, and you’d get to make a difference. Working for the government was a privilege, and you were really working for your fellow citizens. But now far fewer government employees approach their jobs as a privilege to serve. What changed?
Labor unions came along, unionized many government employees, and drastically increased what a government employee could expect to receive in pay and benefits. Now most forms of “public service” are more profitable than working in the private sector. The government employee unions also trained government employees to demand ever higher pay and never-ending benefits, all funded by their fellow citizens.1
To be clear, we shouldn’t begrudge individual government employees for what they get in pay and benefits from the government. As we wrote this book, we even thought more than a few times that we should go out and apply for government jobs ourselves. We understand that government workers don’t make the system, they just benefit from it. But make no mistake, the culture of “public service” has changed from a focus on giving back to a focus on getting. And through their incessant focus on extracting more from the employer, unions have encouraged government workers to consider their jobs as an entitlement, not a privilege.
Many Americans, including Tea Party supporters, are angered by the decline of true public service. According to Tea Party advocate Donna Wiesner Keene, “Tea Party members are loyal tax-paying citizens, but their anger begins with the lack of value received for taxes—the transformation of government worker from asset to liability, of the people’s government to the union’s government.”2 With this crucial change, government employee unions have been able to unite all net tax receivers into a huge special interest group that is focused on growing the government. Net tax receivers are those Americans whose income comes from the government one way or another—as salary, welfare benefits, and subsidies. Don’t government employees pay taxes? Of course they do. But it isn’t close to the amount they receive in salary and benefits—and, after all, they’re really just paying back tax dollars they already received from you. They give the government a cut of the pie they just took from your stove. This doesn’t make government employees bad people, and many government workers surely give good service in exchange for their salary. But whether government workers work hard for their money or not, it doesn’t change the fact that they are dependent on government to earn their living and are paid with taxpayer dollars.
This mammoth special interest group of net tax receivers is represented by the Democrat Party. Whether individual net tax receivers are liberal or conservative, it is the Democrat Party that supports their personal interests in keeping government large and growing it bigger.
On the other side is a dwindling group of people who actually pay the taxes that keep the other group afloat. How much longer are taxpayers going to be able to support the weight of net tax receivers?
You Should Work for the Government
Once unions organized government workers, the earlier pay gap between government and private sector workers closed. Then, the gap expanded in the other direction. Government service is now far more lucrative than private sector work ever has been or probably ever will be. If you get a government job, you can be set for the rest of y
our life—above market salary, great health benefits, and virtually unlimited job security while you are working, followed by early retirement and a generous and steady guaranteed pension until your death.
The smartest among you who didn’t know this before reading this book will put the book down right now and go apply for a government job. Michelle Obama, our First Lady, says: “Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that.”3 Michelle Obama captures the message that we are all given about government service—that America needs more government workers to serve our nation. But is it really true anymore? How much “service” does our nation really need? And are we paying our government employees too much?
Paying Government Employees
Economists have shown that government workers are overpaid compared with private sector workers, but it still remains a much debated question. Unions and some liberals argue that government employees still are not paid enough because they are so much more “qualified” than private sector workers.
Federal government workers averaged over twice the salary and benefits that an average private sector worker makes. Federal government employees average a stunning $126,141 annually in salary and benefits.4 And how many federal government workers do you think make more than $100,000 in salary alone, before overtime and benefits? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? Fifty thousand? No, actually there were 459,016 federal workers making more than $100,000 in salary alone, over one in five of all federal civil service workers.5 We can’t possibly need that many highly paid government workers to run our federal government, even if they are über-qualified.
One of the best detailed comparisons of full-time federal government workers and private-sector workers was undertaken by James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation. His report shows that federal workers earn an average of 22 percent more in cash salary than a comparable private sector worker, controlling for the major factors like age, education, race, and location.6 Pile on all the other retirement, health, and other benefits federal workers receive and you have a huge gap between federal government and private workers. Federal workers receive total compensation of “30 percent to 40 percent… above and beyond their observable skills,” Sherk found.7 Other reports have shown that federal government workers at the low end of the pay scale experience the greatest premium over private sector workers.8 Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute shows that state and local government workers made on average 34 percent more in salary and 70 percent more in benefits than private sector workers.9 With that knowledge, why would anyone want to make the sacrifice required to work in the private sector?
Job for Life
And then there is the job security that comes with being a government worker. Ronald Reagan once stated, “A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” He was making the important point that once our government creates a new government program, it is very hard to get rid of it. The same could be said of hiring a government employee—once hired, they are rarely, if ever, fired.
At almost all government jobs, you would have to work pretty hard to be fired—drug use on the property, embezzlement, murder, that kind of thing. Businesses fire their workers three times as often as the federal government.10 Once you have been on the job with the government a few years, there is almost no chance that you will be fired or laid off. In fact, there is really only one way that you will be separated from your apparently God-given right to continue holding your federal job—death. At many federal agencies, death is more common than getting fired.11 The corpse from Weekend at Bernie’s is probably still sitting at his desk, drawing federal pay.
Here’s an easy, impartial test to determine whether working for the government is a good deal: how often do government workers voluntarily quit their jobs compared to the private sector?12 If government workers are underpaid, they’d probably quit their jobs more than private sector workers; but if they are overpaid, they would probably hold on to those valuable jobs more than people in the private sector.
So, do government workers quit? Sure, but not very often. Government workers practically never quit their jobs—once employed by the government, state and local workers quit at one-third the rate of private sector workers.13 Federal government workers quit even less often—at only one-eighth the rate of private sector workers.14 Government workers seem to either die at their government-issued desks—or, more frequently, on the links in Florida living off their guaranteed pensions. Why would anyone in their right mind ever give up a deal that good?
READY TO BE A PUBLIC SERVANT?
Here’s one real federal government job that you might consider. Go be an “invitation coordinator” for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.15 You’ll send out invitations, handle RSVPs, and be like a government wedding planner. Applicants must be highly qualified to “serve as expert on calendar issues”—after all, mixing up Mondays and Tuesdays is a challenge too many Americans have to face every day, especially consumers invited to parties at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
So, what can you expect to receive as compensation for your in-demand invitation coordinating service? Try a starting salary of up to $103,000, plus five weeks of vacation. Your local stationery store isn’t likely to give you that. Plus, with government employment, the government will pick up 75 percent of your health insurance premiums with “coverage for preexisting conditions, and no waiting periods,” not to mention a cushy retirement program. Are you ready to enter “public service” yet?
Pension Jackpot
Retirement is where the real payoff comes—and it comes quicker for government workers than for the rest of us. Government workers are generally able to retire with thirty years of service at age fifty-five, or even earlier, at a full pension for life.16 In contrast, only 20 percent of private sector workers get this type of traditional defined benefit pension from their employer.17 Almost all business workers have to depend on a retirement plan based on their own contributions and modest contributions from their employer, their Social Security payments, and any other savings to fund their retirement.18 And to receive full Social Security benefits, these workers now have to wait until they are sixty-six or sixty-seven (depending on their year of birth). Retirement security is very difficult to achieve for most American workers, except for the most successful and, of course, except for government workers.
The average New York City police officer, for example, can retire after only twenty-two years of service—often in his early forties.19 An officer who retires as a captain can expect to receive upwards of $92,000 per year in retirement benefits, costing the city nearly $3 million during his retirement. Of course, we appreciate our police officers—they put their lives at risk to keep us safe. But no matter how much we appreciate them, we also have to realize that retired government workers in all areas of service are bringing our government’s house down and foisting huge burdens on the next generation of Americans.
Now, how many Americans do you think have the $3 million in retirement savings it would take to fund that police officer’s pension we were just discussing? Unfortunately, not too many. If you want to see how much you’d collect in pension if you were a government employee, the Manhattan Institute has a handy calculator at CalculateYourPublicPension.com which shows you how much you would collect on a state-by-state basis. Try it—you’ll be so shocked you might actually consider trading in your corporate job or your small business for the benefits of government work.20
Although there are differences between pensions available at the federal, state, and local levels, most government workers get a pension based on at least 60 percent of their last working salary. Since pension income is generally based on average salary from the last three working years of his career, the government worker can jack up his overtime in his last years on the job to boost, even double, the amount of his pe
nsion.21 And it gets even better—in some states, government workers who have hit retirement age can retire and get hired back at their same job and earn another government salary on top of their pension.22 It’s one for the price of two!
Government Service Lifestyle
Government workers must work harder than workers in the private sector for all that extra pay and benefits, right? You decide. A news team investigation in Pittsburgh tracked edits to Wikipedia, the open-source website where anyone can log in to change facts about events, people, and objects. The news team found “thousands of edits done by government employees on government time using government computers. And few of those edits have anything to do with government business.” What were these intrepid scholars up to? They were editing the Wikipedia pages for Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, singer Beyoncé, and James Bond. One employee edited the profile for Lurch, the butler on The Addams Family—he added the valuable information that Lurch didn’t actually play the harpsichord. Another employee wrote a full plot summary for a Star Wars TV series. Overall, the news team found 1,536 edits by state employees and 5,542 edits by federal offices. And, as the news team pointed out, “Wikipedia is just one Web site.”23
Even if these wiki-employees are an aberration, we do know that government employees tend to be in the office less often than workers in businesses. Federal employees get a whopping 13 days of sick leave, 10 federal holidays, and up to 26 additional days of vacation for a total of up to 49 days of paid time off per year. Because unions encourage their workers to use all their “sick” days as holidays instead of just when they are actually sick, government workers get the equivalent of up to ten paid weeks of vacation per year—that’s equal to working a four-day workweek every week!24 How would your business do with you gone that much?
Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind Page 3
