JACKSON, Miss. — Whenever Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has asked lawmakers to weaken benefits for state employees, his proposals have met little resistance from workers.
Mississippi is among those states, many in the South, where most government employees do not have the right to collective bargaining, the benefit that has caused political upheaval in Wisconsin and has become a national flash point for those who argue that public-employee benefits are too generous.
Nine of the 10 states with the lowest percentage of public employees eligible for collective bargaining are in the South, according to data compiled by Barry Hirsch of Georgia State University and David Macpherson of Trinity University in San Antonio.Their research shows only about two in five public employees nationwide have the type of collective-bargaining rights.
Government jobs are still seen as more secure and desirable than most private-sector jobs even in states where public employees do not have the right to collective bargaining. In Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the nation, state workers get 10 paid holidays a year, their sick days and vacation days can be rolled over from year to year, and they can retire after 25 years of service under a defined benefit plan. They also have a certain level of civilservice job protection.
But those workers have fewer protections and generally less generous compensation and benefits than public employees represented by collective bargaining. While pay and perks vary greatly among states, the primary benefit is that governors and lawmakers cannot unilaterally impose changes, such as pension tweaks, without going to the bargaining table, nor can they impose layoffs without following union tenure rules.
In California, where most state employees are covered by collective bargaining, negotiated labor contracts allow state workers to retire, collect their pensions and then return to work, allowing them to make more money than before.
Two independent government auditing agencies in California have recommended overhauling the state’s pension system, but unions there have vowed to sue if the governor and Legislature try to enact changes outside the bargaining process.
Governors and lawmakers in states without collective bargaining can make such changes without consultingworkers. Pensions for new public employees in Virginia, for example, were shifted last year to a 401(k)-style system similar to that used in the private sector.
Maryland and Tennessee have hybrid systems. Some Maryland employees are represented by unions and have the right to bargain with the governor, but there is no binding arbitration and no right to strike. Teachers in Tennessee have the right to collective bargaining, but other public employees do not.
“We call it collective bargaining-lite ... because they’re not as strong as what you see in a number of the northern states,” said Sue Esty, assistant director of the Maryland chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Barbour persuaded the Mississippi Legislature in 2004 to temporarily erase civil-service protections for corrections employees, which allowed the prison system to fire workers and trim the payroll. Mississippi lawmakers also voted last year to make public employees put 9 percent of their own pay into the state retirement system, up from 7.25 percent, and they’ve made government workers hired since 2006 pay more for their health insurance than their longer-serving colleagues.
“We’ve been holding on by a hair through the political process,” said Brenda Scott, head of the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees, which has no bargaining power but provides a voice for state government workers to air their concerns before the governor and Legislature.
Barbour says his actions tilt the balance of power away from unions and toward the side of state taxpayers. He said he supports Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to eliminate most collective-bargaining rights for government workers.
“When they have collective bargaining in Wisconsin, on one side of the table there’s state employee unions or the local employee unions. On the other side of the table are politicians that they paid for the election of those politicians,” Barbour said. “Now, who represents the taxpayers in that negotiation? Well, actually, nobody.”
In states without collective bargaining, public employees are “completely subject to thepower of the governor” because lawmakers often don’t want to get involved labor disputes, said Ed Ott, who has been active in the New York labor movement for 42 years and is a former executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council AFL-CIO.
“It’s really about a balance of power between employer and employee,” said Ott, a lecturer on contemporary labor issues at the City University of New York’s Murphy Institute. “Without any collective-bargaining rights, you have no ability to say, ‘Whoa, why don’t we try something else?’” Information for this article was contributed by Bob Lewis, Gary Robertson, Brian Witte and Phillip Rawls of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 02/28/2011