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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > February > 05 > Entry
Editorial: Pay cuts look good next to layoff notices
Gov. Ted Strickland isn’t settling for symbolism by asking state workers to take pay cuts of up to 6 percent. Even though he’s proposing a sliding scale — with lower paid workers giving up the least — he’s talking about real money.
He believes he can just impose the cuts on nonunion employees, but unionized workers would have to agree to a reduction.
A major union is balking, and who knows whether the Democratic governor — who campaigned with the support of organized labor — can bring people around.
(Other state elected officials may or may not follow his lead with regard to their workers; and if the governor wants to cut the pay of elected officials offices, he would have to change the law. Their salaries are set in statute.)
Mr. Strickland’s success may depend on how much worse the economy gets. It’s not inconceivable that pay cuts could look good to unions and their members if the economy keeps tanking.
“I expect some pushback,” Gov. Strickland said this week. “But I would hope that most groups and entities and individuals would recognize that we’re all in this together, and that there does need to be shared sacrifice.”
Get ready to hear a lot about “shared sacrifice.” In celebrating what could become increasingly common in both the public and private sectors, President Barack Obama, in his inauguration speech, talked about the “selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job….”
In the public sector — where profits aren’t a driver — pay cuts in this environment are designed purely to avert layoffs, a fact that’s worth keeping in mind when workers and union leaders are evaluating whether the governor is asking too much.
In truth, many public employees today are generally doing very well as compared to their private-sector peers with respect to job security, pay and benefits. Specifically, their defined-benefit pension plans — still the norm in public employment — are becoming rare to nonexistent in private industry. Moreover, their pension benefits are extremely generous by any yardstick, allowing many government workers to retire in their 50s and begin a second career.
All of this is financed with sizeable contributions from workers themselves, of course, but also from strapped taxpayers.
Meanwhile, workers outside of government who have been saving for their retirement through their employer-sponsored 401(k) plans have watched years of gains achieved through patient investing and saving go up in smoke. These people — taxpayers all — are going to have a hard time getting too bothered about 6 percent cuts for people in government, which — in all likelihood — probably would be temporary.
Too often government workers get a bad rap, even as many of them are doing important and indispensable work. They keep prisoners locked up; they make sure your water is safe to drink; they inspect bridges; they try to ensure that consumers aren’t scammed, and on and on.
When a Democratic governor is pleading for wage concessions — after he has spent his long political career taking up for workers — that’s a statement of how difficult things have become. Dismissing Mr. Strickland out of hand is denying a problem that very quickly could cost an awful lot of good people their very good jobs.
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