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Dayton
Business Journal...
Conservative
think tank says public
workers earn 43% premium
by Jeff Bell
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Another
salvo was fired in the battle
over Senate Bill 5 on Wednesday, this time by a conservative think tank
that
says Ohio’s public workers are better compensated than their
private-sector
counterparts.
The
study by the Washington,
D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute
found public workers in Ohio enjoy a 43.4
percent premium in total
compensation over private-sector workers. That conclusion takes into
account
pay, benefits, present value of guaranteed retirement and the value of
job
security.
The
study’s authors, Andrew Biggs and
Jason Richwine, said the state’s public workers are paid 2.5 percent
less than
comparable private-sector employees. However, they found their fringe
benefits
to be more than twice as generous as those paid in the private sector.
The
authors said that when pay and benefits are taken into consideration,
public
workers receive 31.1 percent more in total compensation than private
workers.
The
study also concluded public
employees enjoy greater job security than private-sector workers,
saying that
security has an economic value equal to approximately 10 percent of
compensation.
The
study was commissioned by the Ohio
Business Roundtable, a partnership of CEOs from the state’s major
businesses. A
Roundtable executive said the study was undertaken in response to the
debate
over State Issue 2, the November ballot measure that would repeal S.B.
5, the
new law that restricts the collective bargaining rights of Ohio’s
public
workers.
S.B.
5 supporters claim the law will
help rein in soaring employee compensation costs that can’t be
sustained by
state and local governments and school districts. Foes of the law claim
it is
an attack on labor unions and Ohio’s previous collective bargaining law
was
sufficient to control employee costs.
In
a recent interview with WDTN-TV,
the Dayton Business Journal’s TV news partner, Ohio Gov. John Kasich
said
Senate Bill 5 was a necessary part of eliminating Ohio’s budget deficit.
“Most
people don’t have a guaranteed
pension, public employees do. God bless them... but they ought to pay
for some
of it,” Kasich said.
Read
it at the Dayton Business Journal
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