By Will Collette
A new report was just released by the industry-funded RI Public Expenditure Council (RIPEC) that compares public versus private employment.
Because RIPEC is funded by business, I often worry about bias against workers whenever they release a new report. In this case, I was surprised to see a distinct effort to be fair as they show that their research does not support the common wisdom that public employees have cushy, high paid jobs and outlandish benefits when compared to workers in the private sector.
One of the first myths this report shattered is that somehow Rhode Island has an abnormally high level of public employment. That simply is not true. According to RIPEC, only 11.7% of Rhode Island workers are employed by government, compared to the national average of 14.1%. Rhode Island state and local governments employ a lower percentage of workers than our neighbors - government workers are 14% of the Massachusetts workforce and 13.5% of the Connecticut workforce.
In Rhode Island, overall wages and benefits tend to be higher in the government workforce than in the private sector workforce. RIPEC attributes that to higher education levels and age in the public workforce, and to a private sector still heavily reliant on low-wage work (manufacturing, services). Rhode Island's private sector workforce is lower paid than the US average - an average of $42,532 in Rhode Island, compared to the US average of $46,451.
And when compared to Connecticut and Massachusetts, each with a private industry average annual salary of around $60,000, Rhode Island's private sector jobs are very low paid.
RIPEC singles out the fact that Rhode Island wages are so low as a sign that Rhode Island needs to develop more 21st century jobs, rather than rely on manufacturing and services so much.
In Rhode Island, public workers do better than private sector workers in jobs that require a high school diploma or some college. But for very low-end jobs (no high school) and for jobs that require a BA or graduate degree, the private sector pays a lot more than the public sector.
Government workers' pay would be a LOT less overall than private sector workers in Rhode Island if it wasn't for better benefits packages. This, of course, is at the core of the state's current budget angst.
Government workers have not commanded the same pay levels as many of their private sector counterparts, but did focus on getting good pension and health care plans. Rhode Island private sector jobs, especially those in manufacturing, retail or service, offer far inferior benefits, if they offer any benefits at all.
I was pleased to see that RIPEC did not engage in union-bashing, but stuck to putting the numbers out there first and then tried to tease some meaning from them.
As the battle over public employee benefits gets bloodier, it may be useful to look at the numbers and remember that public workers chose to ask for more in benefits than dollars in their paychecks, and got those benefits in their contracts, usually in lieu of pay increases.
When I hear people who worked at terrible, crappy private sector jobs say they would like to see public workers stripped of their retirement and benefits, it seems like these private sector workers are like crime victims. They're like people who have been beaten and robbed, and their idea of justice is to see everyone else get beaten and robbed.
It's not public workers' fault that so many private sector employers in Rhode Island treated workers like they were animals.
The real question is not why public workers should get a pension, it's why shouldn't every worker get a pension?