Hail the public sector unions?

This writer’s Jan. 10 column headlined “Taxpayer uprising the only answer” triggered angry responses from current and retired public employees who objected to the contention that the various pension plans are bleeding governments dry.

The bottom line of the column: It’s time for private sector taxpayers in Ohio to launch a campaign for a constitutional amendment to end PERS, STRS, police and firefighters pension plans and put all government employees under the Social Security system. That way, everyone would have the pleasure of approaching retirement not knowing whether the expected benefit would be available.

A word

Readers of the column also took great exception to a word that was used to describe public sector retirees. Comments can be found by accessing the column on Vindy.com, The Vindicator’s web site.

But there was also this e-mail several days after the piece ran: “Even the New York Times agrees with you.” Attached to the message was a Times story headlined “Most U.S. Union Members Are Working for the Government, New Data Shows.”

Here’s the opening paragraph of the story written by Steven Greenhouse:

“For the first time in American history, a majority of union members are government workers rather than private-sector employees, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Friday.”

In 2009, union membership fell so fast in the private sector that the 7.9 million unionized public-sector workers easily outnumbered those in the private sector, where labor’s ranks shrank to 7.4 million, from 8.2 million in 2008, the Times reported.

There was a quote from Fred Siegel, a visiting professor of history at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, that vindicated this writer’s column:

“At the same time the country is being squeezed, public-sector unions are a rising political force in the Democratic Party,” Siegel, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization, said. “They depend on extra money for the public sector, and that puts the Democrats in a difficult position. In four big states — New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California — the public-sector unions have largely been untouched by the economic downturn. In those states, you have an impending clash between the public-sector unions and the public at large.”

This is what was written in Jan. 10 about Ohio’s public pension system:

“We are stuck with the system because those who have the power to change it have neither the desire nor motivation to do so. Indeed, members of the General Assembly in Columbus are beneficiaries of the public pension system. So, they aren’t willing to do anything that would reduce benefits.”

But the New York Times wasn’t the only newspaper that found the Labor Department’s study on union membership to be significant.

Michael Barone, a senior political analyst with the Washington Examiner, wrote a piece under the headline, “Public-sector unions bleed taxpayers.”

“Public-sector unionism is a very different animal from private-sector unionism. It is not adversarial but collusive. Public-sector unions strive to elect their management, which in turn can extract money from the taxpayers to increase wages and benefits — and can promise pensions that future taxpayers will have to fund,” wrote Barone, a regular on the TV talk show circuit.

Numbers

But Barone notes that in the end, public-sector employees are still heavily outnumbered by those who depend on the private sector for their livelihoods.

“Voters may bridle at the higher taxes needed to pay for $100,000-plus pensions for public employees who retire in their 50s” in states likes California, New York and New Jersey and may move, as so many have already done, to states like Texas, where public-sector unions are weak and taxes are much lower.

And so, to the readers who responded with anger to this writer’s column about how the public pension system is draining government, here’s a simple message: Private sector taxpayers have nothing more to give. Retirement is no longer an option even for a worker in his mid-60s. And at the end of his regular work life, he will have to find ways to bolster his pension.

That’s the reality of the workplace that public sector employees who are able to retire in their prime just don’t understand.