Bluster surrounds debate over salaries, benefits

It's about fairness.

If we've learned anything from labor demonstrations in the Midwest and budget battles in Nevada, it's this: Honest debate about public employee salaries and benefits and collective bargaining reform simply isn't possible.

Not when union chiefs are little more than professional exaggerators.

Not when the stakes in every policy scuffle are consistently mischaracterized.

Not when irrelevant, distracting talking points carry the day.

The nasty yapping about public employees having a right to collective bargaining, about government workers being "demonized," about blaming Wall Street instead of unions for budget holes is all white noise.

The fundamental issue is fairness.

Is it fair that government employees, on average, darn near everywhere, make significantly more money than their private-sector peers?

Is it fair that government employees get the kind of job security, paid leave and medical benefits that most companies can no longer afford?

Is it fair that public employees can start collecting a generous pension in their late 40s, after just 25 years of service, when typical taxpayers must work nearly 50 years before they're eligible for paltry Social Security benefits, and diligently save throughout their lifetimes for any income beyond that?

It's about fairness.

Today, there is no economic relationship between the government work force and the taxpayers it purportedly serves. Read between the lines of protest signs, and this disconnect is what public employees, their unions and their enablers are defending.

When the economy tanks and the private sector sheds jobs, public employees get to keep their positions.

When tax revenues decline, tax rates must be raised so public employees can keep collecting guaranteed annual pay raises.

When rising unfunded pension liabilities start squeezing the budgets of vital government functions, sustaining the unsustainable is the priority.

More for us, less for you.

How is that fair?

Over the past two weeks, three reports have brought greater clarity to this critical issue.

The New York Times reported that state government jobs, on average, paid more than private-sector equivalents. The pay gap in Nevada was among the four worst for positions requiring and not requiring a college degree.

USA Today, examining the pay gap between state and local government workers and private employers, found Nevada to be the worst offender, with a 35 percent spread between the public and private sectors.

The report you might have missed, however, came from our neighbor to the west on Feb. 24. The bipartisan Commission on California State Government Organization and Economy -- better known as the Little Hoover Commission -- eviscerated the Golden State's pension system, saying it has metastasized from a retirement safety net into an easily scammed mechanism to make government workers wealthy.

The panel said the state must cut benefits not just for future hires, as Gov. Brian Sandoval has proposed in Nevada, but for current workers as well.

Never forget the wave of pension defaults that struck the private sector early last decade. When that shook out in bankruptcy courts, current retirees took it in the shorts. Their pension checks shrunk overnight, in some cases by more than half. Many workers closing in on retirement learned they'd get next to nothing.

Yet current public employees and retirees are guaranteed their pension benefits as a property right? And taxpayers must work harder, into old age, so government workers can keep quitting while they're young?

With six-figure pensions all too common for government retirees here and elsewhere, here's some food for thought: For a private-sector worker to retire at age 55 and have $100,000 per year to live off, including annual adjustments for inflation, he must have at least $2 million in the bank (depending on the retirement instrument used), but that's cutting it close.

Union chiefs can downplay their pension benefits all they want. The fact is, most of their members have been guaranteed a millionaire's retirement. And today state and local government pensions are underfunded by $2.5 trillion, according to some estimates.

Even though some Wall Street analysts are starting to warn about government bond and pension bubbles bursting and the kind of havoc that will wreak on markets and the recovering economy, the budget-balancing steps elected Republicans are advocating in many states are small.

In states where collective bargaining is allowed, governments want the flexibility most businesses enjoy in controlling expenses during times of crisis. Primarily, that involves being able to adjust personnel costs immediately, rather than carry out bad-faith talks for six months while the ship takes on more water.

Who needs collective bargaining, anyway? Federal workers can't bargain for wages and benefits, yet they're the best-compensated sector of the government work force, with annual benefits worth nearly as much as the typical American worker gets in pay. In Clark County, management is seeking 9 percent budget cuts to deal with declining property tax collections and an anticipated state revenue grab. And Al Martinez, president of the Service Employees International Union Local 1107, has declared his members' wages and benefits -- the lion's share of county expenditures -- off limits.

"Why does it have to be on the backs of our employees? ... We need to hold the line and maintain what we have."

This from a union that has collected on pay raises every year during the recession, its only "concessions" being reductions in the size of those raises. County employees still have all their benefits, including a paid holiday for their birthdays.

But in Carson City, the agitation continues for massive tax increases to "hold the line," even though unemployment remains stubbornly high in the Silver State.

Isn't it fair to expect that public employees make sacrifices like those forced upon everyone else? Shouldn't they have the same standard of living as the people who pay them?

Should government workers be a privileged class?

That's what all the bluster and baloney is about.

It's about fairness.

Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is a Review-Journal editorial writer.