Mark Gaffney: Labor voices

Stop blaming workers for state budget woes

Public sector employee pay and benefits aren't cause of deficit

As the budget crisis and accompanying gridlock continues to dominate Michigan's political landscape, it seems that some legislators and opinion leaders are back to square one.

Take the case of Mike Bishop, the Republican Senate Majority leader. This week, Sen. Bishop suggested that a good first step to solve the budget crisis is to look for concessions from state employees. He went on to suggest that state employees need to stop whining about requests that they make sacrifices.

Pay concessions granted

How quickly he forgets. Just three years ago, shortly after Governor Jennifer Granholm took office, she succeeded in getting significant concessions from state employees, saving the state $300 million.

But these savings did not come easy for the workers. Savings were found through furlough days, which are unplanned, forced days without pay -- imagine if your employer required that you take next week off, and refused you half of your next paycheck. Savings were found by deferring salary payments and converting some payments into 401(k) contributions. And savings were found through health care reforms with increased co-pays.

At the same time, while it seems to many people that the state Senate is accomplishing less than ever before, state employees are quite the opposite. These workers have been reduced to their lowest numbers since the 1970s. And they are providing more services, more efficiently to more citizens than ever before.

The reality is that state employees are already working hard to do more with less as they provide services to nearly 10 million citizens despite repeated budget cuts and two early retirement programs that have resulted in 7,000 fewer state workers to do the work.

State employees have already made significant economic concessions, and through it all have remained dedicated public servants working hard to provide critical services to us, the citizens.

But many people choose not to believe this. It is easier to repeat old prejudices and myths. It is convenient for some to say the budget problems are due to the public worker labor force. Rather than for those same people to find the courage to raise revenues.

Currently, the attack is also on teachers and school related personnel. Some say that providing education is expensive, so it must be that the work force has too many benefits and too much pay. The Legislature is considering a graded premium scheme where the current retiree health care benefit would become based on years of service. If this is implemented, some employees will lose some amount of future health insurance while Michigan legislators would still receive retiree health care coverage after only five years on the job. Rather than take cuts themselves, its easier to blame workers.

Union workers are taxpayers. Construction workers who receive a state mandated prevailing wage level work in different locations, almost always work temporarily, go through three to five year apprenticeship training and more often suffer layoffs. They deserve a decent wage. To attack prevailing wage as a way to fix the state's budget is another example of blaming workers.

Act 312 works

It's also argued that Act 312 needs fixing, but it's not broken. A true and careful analysis would show Act 312 works. We don't want police and firefighters to strike. They get binding arbitration instead. If the law was strictly held to and if arbitrators acted more quickly, Act 312 would work better in its current form. Rank and file police and firefighters are not overpaid.

Here's labors appeal today: Stop blaming teachers, stop blaming publicly employed nurses and counselors and stop blaming police, firefighters and others who keep us safe. Michigan's budget problems are not the fault of those taxpayers who are also workers.

Too many tax cuts and a changed economy put our state into a structural deficit. Repealing part of the 1998 income tax break and extending the sales tax to the new economy is the proper fix. It's a longer lasting solution than trying to blame taxpayers who work for a living.

Mark Gaffney is president of the Michigan AFL-CIO.