For Immediate Release
Monday, July 29, 1996
New Report Dispels Myth That Public Employees Are "Protected Class"
Washington, DC —A new report released by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO, dispels assertions by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) -- which is allied with the Heritage Foundation -- that public sector employees are paid more than private sector workers. The AFSCME report, called Getting It Right, found that when specific job titles and classifications are compared, the overall compensation for public and private sector workers is essentially the same.
The AFSCME report's findings were based on figures from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, which were used to make "apples-to-apples" comparisons on the following criteria:
- Job titles, which found that compensation costs are generally equivalent when specific positions within government and private industry are compared;
- Geographic location, which showed that public workers tend to earn similar salaries to private workers within a given city, while wages for both sectors vary from city to city;
- Wage trends, which found that while public employees made significant gains in the 1980s to close the wage gap between themselves and their private sector counterparts, those wage differences have since evaporated.
AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee said the AFSCME report clearly refutes the findings of earlier reports released by ALEC.
"We had serious problems with the earlier ALEC reports, not only because their findings were inaccurate, but because the procedures employed by ALEC in reaching its conclusions seemed deliberately misleading," McEntee said. "ALEC's reports were based on comparisons between all public sector workers and all private sector employees. At no point did it compare the two sectors by analyzing compensation for similar jobs within both sectors."
For example, the AFSCME report found that professional and technical employees -- who generally earn higher wages than blue collar and sales employees -- represent about one-fourth of the private sector, but more than half of the public sector workforce. By the same token, sales represents 14 percent of the private workforce, but is totally absent from the public workforce. By making general comparisons between the entire public versus private sectors, McEntee said, the ALEC report seriously skews comparisons between the average public and private sector salaries.
McEntee contrasted this with the findings of the AFSCME report, which were not based on broad generalizations within the two sectors, but on specific comparisons between public and private sector job titles and other factors. By comparing compensation for specific job titles within both sectors, the AFSCME report found that public employees are often paid less than their private sector counterparts.
"Despite the fact that ALEC resorted to questionable procedures to justify its findings, it has not clearly demonstrated that there is any significant difference in wages for public and private sector employees," McEntee said. "Nevertheless, it has attempted to justify tax cuts and reductions in funding for public services by making public payrolls seem inflated, and by portraying public employees as a 'protected class.'
"We're confident that our findings, which were arrived at through meticulous comparisons of several criteria, will go a long way toward dispelling those myths."
To request a copy of this report, please call the number listed above.
