NEW YORK – 
With Wisconsin locked in a union battle, The Daily Beast looks at the 15 states that could blow up next and crunches the numbers to find whether they're really on shaky financial footing—or playing politics.
With Wisconsin locked in a union battle, The Daily Beast looks at the 15 states that could blow up next and crunches the numbers to find whether they're really on shaky financial footing—or playing politics.Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt have toppled despotic governments, while Libyans are on the verge of doing the same. The stakes are not as high in Wisconsin and the 15 other states that have proposed or are expected to propose various levels of de-engagement from both public- and private-sector unions, but the spirit of the demonstrations throughout the Midwest has been as fierce as those in the Middle East.
1, New Hampshire
Image: Joel Page / AP Photo
Union Share of Public Workforce: 50.3%
Debt 2009: $8.4 billion
GDP 2009: $59.4 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 14.2%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $2.5 billion (32%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $3.1 billion (95%)
Jim Kirk, firefighter: “It’s about safety, making sure I can continue to collectively bargain for my members, the safety of my members and working conditions of firefighters in Nashua.”
2, New Jersey
Image: Mel Evans / AP Photo
Union Share of Public Workforce: 60.6%
Debt 2009: $56.9 billion
GDP 2009: $483 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 11.8%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $34. 4 billion (27%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $68.9 billion (100%)
Gov. Chris Christie (R): There are “two classes of people in New Jersey: Public employees who receive rich benefits, and those who pay for them.”
3, Hawaii
Image: Xpixupload / Wikimedia Commons
Union Share of Public Workforce: 52.1%
Debt 2009: $6.8 billion
GDP 2009: $66.4 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 10.4%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $5.2 billion (31%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $10.8 billion 100%)
Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D): “In Hawaii, we don’t confront each other as adversaries; we discuss our mutual challenges in good faith; we meet as friends with a common goal. That will be how we conduct ourselves in the days ahead.”
4, Montana
Image: Eliza Wiley, Independent Record / AP Photo
Debt 2009: $4.8 billion
GDP 2009: $36.0 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 13.2%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $1.5 billion (16%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $632 million (100%)
John Fleming, teacher: “We should take care of jobs and balance the budget. It seems like we’re distracted now. We’re doing lots of peripheral issues, all the way from sonograms to spears for hunting, and we think it’s time to get serious about what’s important to the people of Montana.”
5, Alaska
Image: Chris Miller / AP Photo
Debt 2009: $6.6 billion
GDP 2009: $45.7 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 14.4%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $3.5 billion (24%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $4.0 billion (44%)
Alaska AFL-CIO president Vince Beltrami: “I think it boils down to whether you believe that unions are looking out for the middle class and workers or if you believe that corporate interests, whose major motivation is profit, [are] working for employee interests. That is a notion to me that is ludicrous.”
6, Michigan
Image: Greg DeRuiter, The State Journal / AP Photo
Union Share of Public Workforce: 51.7%
Debt 2009: $29.6 billion
GDP 2009: $368.4 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 8.0%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $11.5 billion (16%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $39.9 billion (98%)
Gov. Rick Snyder (R): “I and my administration fully intend to work with our employees and union partners in a collective fashion.”
7, West Virginia
Image: Jeff Gentner / AP Photo
Union Share of Public Workforce: 28.8%
Debt 2009: $6.5 billion
GDP 2009: $63.3 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 10.3%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $5.0 billion (36%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $6.1 billion (96%)
Butch Tritt, highway inspector: “Right now, on average, most state employees have been here nine years; they’re still earning entry level pay. New hires are coming off the street making what a nine-year veteran makes, and it’s really causing some problems. It’s gotten so bad that now we’re hiring people using special hiring rates above maybe what a nine-year veteran is making, and it’s just decimating the workforce.”
8, Indiana
Image: Alan Petersime, The Star / AP Photo
Union Share of Public Workforce: 32.1%
Debt 2009: $23.7 billion
GDP 2009: $262.6 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 9.0%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $9.8 billion (28%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $442 million (100%)
Gov. Mitch Daniels (R): “We have a new privileged class in America. We used to think of government workers as underpaid public servants. Now they are better paid than the people who pay their salaries.”
9, Pennsylvania
Image: Chris Knight, The Patriot-News / AP Photo
Union Share of Public Workforce: 53.4%
Debt 2009: $41.9 billion
GDP 2009: $554.8 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 7.6%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $13.7 billion (13%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $10.0 billion (99%)
Kevin Harley, spokesman for Gov. Tom Corbett (R): “This is Pennsylvania, not Wisconsin. We’ve had Act 195 [the collective bargaining law] since 1970, and I anticipate that we will continue to have it. I don’t think a bill [repealing it] has a chance in Pennsylvania.”
10, Washington
Image: Steve Bloom, The Olympian / Steve Bloom
Union Share of Public Workforce: 61.2%
Debt 2009: $24.6 billion
GDP 2009: $338.3 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 7.3%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: -$179 million (0%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $7.9 billion (100%)
Becky Little, maintenance technician: “Once something like this happens in one spot, it’s kind of like what happens in the Middle East right now. It has a domino effect.” [sic]
11, Wisconsin
Image: Eric Thayer / Getty Images
Union Share of Public Workforce: 49.6%
Debt 2009: $20.9 billion
GDP 2009: $244.4 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 8.6%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $252.6 million (0%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $1.7 billion (76%)
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: “This isn’t about balancing the budget. This is about making political choices. This is about hurting workers. This is about taking away their rights.”
12, New Mexico
Image: Susan Montoya Bryan / AP Photo
Union Share of Public Workforce: 24.5%
Debt 2009: $8.0 billion
GDP 2009: $74.8 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 10.7%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $4.5 billion (17%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $2.9 billion (95%)
Michael Freed, demonstrator: “Middle class, it’s time to speak up. Egypt did it, so can we.”
13, Minnesota
Image: Erin Westover, The Minnesota Daily / AP Photo
Union Share of Public Workforce: 59.2%
Debt 2009: $10.5 billion
GDP 2009: $260.7 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 4.0%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $10.8 billion (19%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $1.0 billion (100%)
Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN): “It used to be that public employees were underpaid and over-benefited. Now they are over-benefited and overpaid compared to their private-sector counterparts.”
14, Maine
Image: Robert F. Bukaty / AP Photo
Union Share of Public Workforce: 13.0%
Debt 2009: $5.4 billion
GDP 2009: $51.3 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 10.5%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $2.8 billion (20%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $4.3 billion (99%)
State Sen. Troy Jackson (D-ME): “I just don’t know how anyone can say, ‘No, I should be able to get that benefit you’re paying for, but I shouldn’t have to pay for any of it.’”
15, Ohio
Image: Jay LaPrete / AP Photo
Union Share of Public Workforce: 46.2%
Debt 2009: $27.9 billion
GDP 2009: $471.3 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 5.9%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $19.5 billion (13%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $27.0 billion (62%)
Gov. John Kasich (R): “We frankly want to give the managers in the local communities and our schools the ability to control their costs so they don’t have to raise taxes and drive businesses and more jobs out. What we’re trying to do here is to balance it out, to make sure that management has some power and some tools to create to control their costs.”
16, Virginia
Image: Steve Helber / AP Photo
Union Share of Public Workforce: 14.4%
Debt 2009: $24.3 billion
GDP 2009: $408.4 billion
Debt/GDP Ratio: 5.9%
Unfunded Pension Liabilities: $10.7 billion (16%)
Unfunded Health Care & Other Liabilities: $2.6 billion (66%)
Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA): “We don’t have public sector unions in Virginia, we have a right-to-work state, we have very few unions overall, and it’s one of the great selling points that I’ve got to be able to attract business.”
At issue in the U.S. are the collective-bargaining rights of unionized public employees. States facing budget shortfalls and high debt payments want to curtail workers' collective-bargaining ability to in part gain flexibility in dealing with financial crises. Protesters in Wisconsin have found plenty of support and will be joined in solidarity Saturday by protests in every state capital.
By our count 16 states have proposed legislation similar to the bill cleared for vote last Wednesday by Wisconsin's Republican legislators, which would strip public-sector union workers of the right to bargain collectively about any on-the-job issue besides wages.
Political action from Democratic legislators and union supporters in Wisconsin, which in 1959 became the first state to allow public-sector collective bargaining, has spread to Ohio and Indiana (whose governor shelved a "right-to-work" bill), and got us wondering whether these states are really on shaky financial footing, or whether this is all so much political wrangling.
Looking solely at the 16 states that have proposed or are considering laws to trim union rights, we first accounted for 2009 debt-to-GDP ratios, using Census numbers and data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Then we accounted for the percent of pension and health-care liabilities that are unfunded for each state, based on a study by the Pew Center on the States. Finally, because not all workers would be affected by proposed legislation, we accounted for the percent of people in public-sector unions out of total government workers in each state, with data from Unionstats. The average was taken for each category and each state's data were compared to the average, with equal weighting for each of the three categories.
No comments:
Post a Comment