Well, they’re at it again. In a new report called, “The Teaching Penalty: An Update Through 2010,” three EcPI economists claim that public school teachers suffer a 12 percent wage penalty compared to similarly educated workers in the private sector.

But just how similar are private sector employees to their public sector counterparts?

A JOB FOR LIFE

As the chart above demonstrates, state and local public sector workers enjoy a layoff/discharge rate that’s almost three times lower than the private sector.

That’s especially true with public school teachers, most of whom receive “tenure”—a virtual guarantee of life-time employment—after only a few years on the job. Among tenured teachers—even below-average tenured teachers—the chances of losing your job are less than 2 percent nationally. In some states the firing rate is less than 1 percent.

Contrast that to the private sector, where bigger risks and bigger rewards exist. In the private sector, you’re not just promoted based on how many years you’ve worked, or how many obligatory degrees you’ve earned—you’re promoted (and paid) based on hard work and ability. If you don’t perform, you’re at risk of losing your job.

If union supporters want to see equal paychecks, they need to be willing to accept judgment systems where pay equals performance and where the risk of losing your job for failing to perform is real. (Of course, they’re not willing to accept anything of the sort).

A BETTER COMPARISON GROUP

Since comparing teachers to everyone in the private sector is broad and misleading, a more appropriate comparison would be people who do a similar job in the private sector—namely, private school teachers. The US Department of Education collects such data, and it’s available for school years as recent as 2007-08.

The chart at right (courtesy of AEI’s Mark Perry) demonstrates that private school teachers with an equivalent level of education earn considerably less than their public-sector counterparts. To take one example from Perry’s post, a public school teacher with one year or less of experience makes the same amount as a private school teacher with 25 to 29 years of experience.

In separate results available on Perry’s blog, he shows that the private-sector “penalty” holds up across education level as well.

What’s the bottom line? Our belief is that good teachers are generally underpaid for the value of their skill and their impact on society. But we’ll never get to the point where there is consensus on that idea until it is possible to remove those teachers who should not be in the classroom.

And when a research group that receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from teachers unions tells you that the teachers in those unions are underpaid—and suggests that they need to be paid more, regardless of performance—it should be taken with at least a small grain of salt.

Iannazzi isn’t just any college dropout. As the Providence Journal’s Edward Achorn reveals, Iannazzi is the well-connected son of a labor union leader who employs the son of a state senator. Got that?

Well, here’s Achorn’s research to help you follow the money train that young Stephen Iannazzi is riding on the taxpayers’ dime:

Donald Iannazzi, the business manager for Local 1033, the Laborers International Union affiliate that employs 30-year-old lawyer Charles Ruggerio. Charles is the son of Senator Ruggerio.

While Stephen’s qualifications may be on the thin side, his family’s political connections are not.

His father Donald received an annual salary of $212,658, plus $53,212 in “other compensation,” in 2009, according to Local’s 990-filing with the IRS as an organization exempt from paying federal tax. (Senator Ruggerio enjoys a $190,246-a-year compensation package from an arm of the Laborers International Union.)

The family’s employment in state offices and the mayor of Providence’s offices fans out from there.

According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Rhode Islanders earned $42,579 per capita in 2010.  It’d be interesting to see Governor Lincoln Chaffee and state leaders justify Stephen Iannazzi’s unjustifiable salary to the people of Rhode Island who are earning a lot less than $88,000.

As the old saying goes, “It’s not who you know, it’s what labor union you’re connected to.”

The Center for Union Facts seeks an energetic and enterprising researcher to join the group’s growing public outreach and education program.

The Center for Union Facts (CUF) is a leading union watchdog organization dedicated to educating Americans about the labor union movement. We work to expose labor leaders’ abuse of their members’ trust. We are committed to preserving union transparency, democracy, and union members’ right to work. We are also a leading voice against union’s attempts to pass “card check” legislation and the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Center for Union Facts also maintains the largest web-accessible database of information about labor unions, including union finances, union leader compensation, lobbying, hard and soft money political contributions, strikes, unfair labor practices, union elections, and much more. We work extensively with reporters, union members, labor experts, academics, businesses and anyone else who seeks information about labor unions. 

A successful candidate will work with the Managing Director and Executive Director to provide in depth research and writing on the labor movement. A researcher’s duties may include assisting in the Center’s public relations campaigns, writing detailed reports, creating compelling print, television, and online advertisements, and producing web and video content.

Other daily duties are likely to include: news updates and press clips, drafting newsletters, writing blog posts, letters to the editor, press releases, and OpEds, working with whistleblowers, updating our growing social media presence, updating website databases, filing FOIA requests, and assisting in message testing and advertisement development.

Candidates should have a college degree and at least two to five years of work experience in a job that has demonstrated an ability to think on your feet. Candidates should also have a track record of strong writing and research skills. Knowledge of the organized labor movement is a plus. Salary is commensurate with experience.

Please send a cover letter, resume, and brief writing sample demonstrating your research skills to wilson@unionfacts.com

Image courtesy of Thewmatt.

Washingtonians have grown accustomed to the Carpenters Unions’ merry band of bums marching around in circles.

If you’ve never encountered them before, the local Carpenter’s Council pays about 50 homeless people minimum wage to march and beat buckets all day long protesting non-union construction companies. The con, of course, is that the average passerby thinks that the hired-homeless are actually striking carpenters.

Click here to view the embedded video.

None of this is new, except that yesterday I saw them marching in front of an AFL-CIO financed building in 15th Street in Washington, DC.

President Obama may have called for a doubling of U.S. exports within the next five years, but that will become increasingly difficult, thanks to another policy, according to the Wall Street Journal:

At the same time, [Obama] has moved to curb trade in certain areas under pressure from Congress and unions. But the web of existing trade treaties and global trading relationships makes it hard for Mr. Obama to protect one group of American workers without hurting another.

Backers of the trucking restrictions, led by the Teamsters union and U.S. truckers who have long opposed opening the borders to Mexican truckers, say the decision keeps unsafe Mexican trucks off U.S. highways. Opponents, including a coalition of businesses affected by the tariffs and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, say the dispute is putting 25,000 jobs at risk.

Mexican authorities are considering new tariffs on an expanded list of U.S. imports if Washington doesn’t meet its obligations under the North American Free-Trade Agreement that Canada, Mexico and the U.S. signed in 1993.

While Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa wants to call what the Mexican government is doing “blackmail”, this is old-as-the-hills, tit-for-tat, eye for an eye, foreign policy. If Hoffa didn’t think the Mexican government would retaliate for being charged tariffs on imports from the US, and having thousands of unionized workers lose their jobs–both in Mexico and the US (thanks to reduced orders from Mexico), then he clearly is addressing a different problem.

While Hoffa would like us to see him as a benevolent voice, concerned for “unsafe trucks” and the American worker, his “foreign policy” interests are quite narrow, focused on preserving Teamsters’ jobs, not the American work force–much less the Mexican workforce–as a whole.

I will let the Wall Street Journal have the final word:

Rick Bahr, head of the United Steelworkers union local that represents more than 500 employees at the Appleton plant, said six shifts have already been cut, cutting down on overtime. “The battle ends up union versus union, truckers versus the paper workers,” Mr. Bahr said. [...] Kevin Bunnow, 50, a 33-year veteran of the plant, said the reduction in shifts had meant a wage cut of several thousand dollars last year.

“When elephants fight, the grass loses,” he said. “It didn’t take me long to realize, we’re the grass.”

Image courtesy of Allmightymo