fish82;949190 wrote:The state budget is already in place based on SB5. Why would there be layoffs?

• Voters support requiring public employees to pay at least 15 percent of their health insurance costs by a 60-33 margin.
• Voters support requiring public employees to contribute at least 10 percent of their wages toward their pensions by a 57-34 margin.
• Voters support determining pay increases based on merit rather than seniority by a 49-40 margin.

The empirical evidence simply does not bear out the conventional wisdom regarding unions. If employers were really in a position to impose whatever wage rate they wished, then why in the decades prior to large-scale labor unionism did wages not diminish to near zero? (In fact, as we shall see below, real wages skyrocketed in the decades before modern labor law took shape.) For that matter, why did skilled workers earn more than unskilled workers? If firms were really in a position to tell workers to take or leave whatever pathetic wage they might choose to offer, why would they have felt a need to pay skilled workers more than unskilled workers? Why not just pay them both the same pittance?

The case for labor unionism does possess a superficial plausibility, but it is in fact entirely fallacious. Real wages rise not because of union activity but because of the process that George Reisman describes in his productivity theory of wages (which I describe here). In short, business investment in machinery increases the productivity of labor and therefore the output that the economy is capable of producing, and this greater supply puts downward pressure on prices.

As Reisman explains, "It is the productivity of labor that determines the supply of consumers' goods relative to the supply of labor, and thus the prices of consumers' goods relative to wage rates." This phenomenon is not always easy to see in an inflationary economy such as ours, in which prices of most goods seem to go up consistently. But the point remains: prices become lower than they would otherwise be, and all real incomes (wages included) increase.

QuakerOats;957535 wrote:
THAT IS A COMPLETE LIE. RETRACT IT!

For the FACTS, or if you have questions and need answers go here:
http://www.aproundtable.org/pdfs/faqonOH_SB5.pdf

Belly35;957648 wrote: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:
Cost savings from worker contributions to health care and retirement, taking effect today as part of the new collective bargaining laws, will swing the Kaukauna School District from a $400,000 budget deficit to an estimated $1.5 million surplus…. The district… plans to hire teachers and reduce class size. Let’s stop and think of all the protesters who carried signs asserting that their opposition to Scott Walker was for the children.

Glory Days;957651 wrote:John Glenn voting no on Issue 2!........

Glory Days;957655 wrote:Did you know if public workers paid 100% of their health care etc, that school system would have even more millions of dollars in surplus!!!! why stop at 15%, why not 20%, 25%?

Glory Days;957655 wrote:Did you know if public workers paid 100% of their health care etc, that school system would have even more millions of dollars in surplus!!!! why stop at 15%, why not 20%, 25%?

WebFire;957668 wrote:

Glory Days;957675 wrote:just think. if we tax the hell out of the 1% and make public workers pay more in healthcare etc, this country would be out of debt in no time!

QuakerOats;957665 wrote:Good point -- private sector workers pay on average 31% !!

And then of course there is the other side of the equation that no one is YET talking about: how much do the health care plans cost to begin with? In the private sector they average about $12,000 for family coverage; in the public sector it is sometimes $24,000. So, the public will not only be paying 85% of the load, but it is 85% of a massively inflated load. How about scaling back the lavishness of the plans to around $15,000, then your 15% contribution will be more meaningful as Ohio taxpayers will get a break from paying 85% of cadillac plans!

QuakerOats;957535 wrote:For the FACTS, or if you have questions and need answers go here:

http://www.aproundtable.org/pdfs/faqonOH_SB5.pdf

he claim does contain an element of truth. The non-partisan Center for Retirement Research would agree with the notion that benefit packages on average can increase the value of a public employee’s compensation package above that of the average private sector worker.

But there are critical facts that give a different impression of Building a Better Ohio’s claim.

There is general agreement that public employee wages, on average, are less. The AEI study Building a Better Ohio relies on estimates they are about 2.5 less than comparable private employees.

The ad from Building a Better Ohio flatly states that public employees "make 43 percent more" than private sector workers. We think the average listener would interpret that as meaning the average public employee is paid - in wages and benefits - 43 percent more. But some components of the AEI study aren’t based on money changing hands, but rather on the value to the employee of certain benefits.

Even leaving out the considerable disagreements over the calculation of pension costs, the inclusion of job security as a monetized figure in compensation is questionable. The AEI study says that security has a value of 10 percent of the pay. But that doesn’t translate to more money paid to the employee.

Whether it exists or not, job security is an intangible factor, like job satisfaction, that can't be spent, saved or taxed. It doesn’t put more dollars and cents into employee compensation.
We think it is misleading to include it in an accounting of what workers "make."

Also, the AEI study arrived at its 43 percent figure through rounding that we could not follow, and which the Center for Retirement Research questioned, after adding the 10 percent for job security to the 31.2 percent advantage in non-wage benefits it says that public workers have a 43 percent edge over their private sector counterparts.

And that 31.2 percent advantage -- whose calculation is the subject of considerable disagreement in the pension and financial worlds -- is more than three times the finding of the Center for Retirement Research.

On the Truth-O-Meter, we rate Building a Better Ohio’s claim Mostly False