AFSCME’s higher calling
It is a standard bit of Alinskyite strategy: couch your demands in moral terms. It makes your opponents seem small and puts them on the defensive. But while it sounds simple – replace “we want” with “we deserve” – it’s not foolproof. As AFSCME spokesman Anders Lindall demonstrated earlier this week, sometimes the moralizing wears thin, and the...
It is a standard bit of Alinskyite strategy: couch your demands in moral terms. It makes your opponents seem small and puts them on the defensive. But while it sounds simple – replace “we want” with “we deserve” – it’s not foolproof. As AFSCME spokesman Anders Lindall demonstrated earlier this week, sometimes the moralizing wears thin, and the sense of entitlement starts to show through.
AFSCME is in the midst of negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement covering 40,000 state employees. At the same time AFSCME has sued the state over a four percent pay raise that was scheduled for last year. Governor Quinn cancelled the raise, arguing that the money was not available in the state budget. AFSCME is willing to settle for a two-percent boost, but they insist that they are entitled to a pay hike one way or another.
With the increased scrutiny of government pay and benefits AFSCME feels increasingly put-upon. In an interview with WUIS last Monday, Lindall opined that “It used to be that in this country public service used to be a higher calling. It seems more often today, at least from politicians and pundits, that public servants are the whipping boy”.
Amidst the moralizing boilerplate it is the bit about the “higher calling” that is especially galling. It used to be that a “higher calling” meant something like the ministry or charity work, and implied a willingness to sacrifice material wealth and security for the sake of some greater good. But that clearly isn’t what Lindall and AFSCME have in mind.
Illinois Policy Institute research shows that state government employees wages and benefits increased by 17.6 percent after inflation between 1993 and 2008, while workers in the private sector (the overwhelming majority of the workforce) saw their compensation go down by 2.3 percent. The average hourly pay of state government employees is $8.69 an hour higher than that of the private-sector workforce.
And while we normally expect employers to honor their contracts, these are not normal times. Unemployment in Illinois is stuck over eight percent. State government alone is confronting unfunded pension and retiree health care obligations totaling more than $150 billion. New pension reporting rules reveal that state-run pensions are severely underfunded: Springfield holds only 20 to 40 percent of the assets it needs to meet its obligations. The state of Illinois is in a crisis, and in a crisis contracts often get redone.
With that background AFSCME’s “concession” is shown to be more tactical than generous; they still expect raises when so many of their comrades outside of government are taking pay cuts or struggling to find work. These struggling private-sector workers are ultimately the ones who pay for government. And the work they do is important in its own right. AFSCME is in no position to make moral judgments on taxpayers.
Aside from being grasping, AFSCME is also acting in a very short-sighted manner. At a minimum the next contract will need to contain concessions from the union. Even if AFSCME wins its raise today, that just means that the concessions will need to be bigger tomorrow.
In an era when incomes are declining among the 86 percent of Illinoisians who are not fortunate enough to work for government, AFSCME and Lindall apparently consider it their “higher calling” to be sheltered from the hardships that other families are facing. The desire to preserve high pay and generous benefits is hardly noble. Lindall’s protests to the contrary notwithstanding, it is taxpayers who are in the most danger of becoming the whipping boys. AFSCME is in no position to act aggrieved when the people of Illinois call for government employees to accept concessions that are in line with those that workers outside of government are making.