1. Future of Public SectorBargaining FPELRA-Steven Rosenthal President, The Training Tree, Inc.

2. Future of Public Sector Bargaining in Florida

3. Chaos: 1974-1978

4. Infancy: 1978-1984

5. Adolescence: 1984-1992

6. Adulthood: 1993-2007

7. Middle Age & the Future

8. Let’s Look at Historical Data and Ask the Right Questions? We must investigate a Possible, Probable or Preferable Future? How did we get where we are in 2011? Why do we seem to be going in a catastrophic direction? What will we need to do to change the course? Are we strong enough to meet the challenge?

9. Why Did We Have Unions In The First Place? A labor union is a group of workers who have organized in order to pursue common work-related goals, such as better wages and benefits, safer worker conditions, and greater job security. Unions were a reaction to the times and how people were treated. “You get the Union you deserve.”

10. The Basic Structure of Unions Came From A Guild, Trade and Industrial Mentality Craft Union – workers that have the same skill or work in the same profession Industrial Union – workers who are employed in the same industry regardless of their specific skill or profession

12. Collective bargaining Services-Safety and Security

13. National Unions provide the high profile and national voice for the labor movement.

14. Lobbies Congress in support of labor legislation

15. Encourages political activism

17. Labor Laws in the United States Norris-LaGuardia Act (1932) Workers had a legal right to organize Made it difficult to get injunctions against union activities National Labor Relations Act Illegal for employers to discriminate based on union membership Established the National Labor Relations Board Established voting procedure for workers to certify union as the bargaining agent Required employers to recognize the union and bargain in good faith

18. Labor Laws in the United States Fair Labor Standards Act Banned many types of child labor Established the first federal minimum wage Established a standard 40 hour work week Required that workers receive overtime pay

20. After WWII, unions began to take advantage of their new-found strength

21. In the first six months of 1946, almost 3 million workers went on strike

24. Right-to-Work Laws Union Shop – employers can hire workers who don’t belong to the union but nonunion workers must join the union within a specific amount of time to keep their jobs Closed Shop – workers must belong to the union before the employer can hire them

25. Right To Work States

26. FDR was Right! In the public sector, said FDR, "the employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress." Allowing public-employee unions to engage in collective bargaining would mean opening the door to the manipulation of government policy by a privileged private interest. There was a time when even pro-labor Democrats objected to public-sector unionism. "The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the head of the National Federation of Federal Employees.

27. The Tide Turns After WWII In the ensuing half-century, the public sector in the United States has grown enormously. The number of government employees at all levels surged from about 8.2 million in 1959 to 22.5 million in 2009. Historically, government work paid less than comparable employment in the private economy, but greater job security and good pensions compensated for the lower wages. No longer: now government workers tend to fare better than private-sector workers across the board—not only in job security and pensions but in wages and other benefits as well.

28. The Data Shows The Disparity Nationwide, according to BLS data for 2009, state and local government employees were paid an average wage of $26.01 per hour, which was 34 percent higher than the average private-sector wage of $19.39 per hour. Even more lopsided was the public-sector advantage in fringe benefits, such as health and life insurance, paid vacations and sick leave, and—above all—retirement income: state and local governments provided their workers with benefits valued, on average, at $13.65 per hour, a 70 percent premium over the average benefits package in the private sector.

29. The Disparity Widens In addition to being more expensive, the benefits that come with government jobs are provided to more employees. Life insurance, for example, was offered to 80 percent of employees working for the government but to just 59 percent of workers in the private sector. Traditional defined-benefit pension plans were available to 84 percent of government workers—but to only 21 percent of private employees.

30. The Public Sector Abuse Is Everywhere In July 2009, The Boston Globe interviewed Scott Lang, the mayor of New Bedford, Mass., and a rarity -- especially among Democrats -- in his willingness to call urgently for rolling back public pensions and health benefits. He says current pension and health insurance systems for city employees have to go, period. If not, they will destroy the city and its ability to maintain the services people expect like public safety. . . . "It's absolute insanity. They're unsustainable," he says about pensions. "There isn't the money to pay for an unfunded liability like that. All the revenues will be eaten up by past-due promises."

31. The Creation of Pension Pathology The excesses in government pensions have drawn mounting scrutiny in recent years. Every day there are a dozen or more fresh links at the invaluable website PensionTsunami.com, which aggregates the latest press coverage of the "multiple pension crises that are about to drown America's taxpayers." Even traditionally liberal, government-friendly publications -- the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Washington Post -- have devoted considerable attention to the exploding costs of public pension plans and the many techniques state workers can use to "spike" their retirement payout.

32. It Just Keeps Skyrocketing! Unsustainable Pensions Escalating Health Care Liberal Disability Additional Benefits Vacation, PTO, Sick Leave Payouts Shorter Careers and Double and Triple Dippers

33. The Fundamental Flaws-No.1 First, unlike their counterparts in the private sector, government unions are largely free from market discipline. Unions operating in the private economy know that there are limits to the demands they can make of an employer; private firms have to earn a profit to stay alive, and competition swiftly punishes those that fail to control cost and quality. But public-sector unions face no such constraint. The government agencies they bargain with don't have to make a profit or retain customer loyalty; they can't go out of business or relocate to another state.

34. The Fundamental Flaws-No.2 A second advantage lies in the difference between public- and private-sector strikes. In business, a strike (or the threat of a strike) is an economic weapon that takes a toll on both sides: management suffers the loss of business, and labor must absorb the loss of wages. Government services tend to be legal monopolies, a strike by any public employee inflicts pain on the public at large. The union seeks to pressure management by making conditions so miserable that voters will pressure public officials to end the crisis by acceding to the union's demands.

36. Limited “real incentive to curtail or end” the benefit.In public-sector collective bargaining, the fox is watching the hen house-In fact the Fox is in charge of the hen house.

37. The Problem Mounts With Political Lobbying-Just one Union Snapshot SEIU spent $67 million to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats in 2008. In the first nine months following Obama's inauguration, union president Andrew Stern visited the White House 22 times—more than any other visitor. Several top SEIU officials were appointed to posts in the new administration, including Patrick Gaspard, who became the White House political director, and Craig Becker, who was named to the National Labor Relations Board. "SEIU is on the field, it's in the White House, it's in the administration," gloated Stern

38. The Federal Government is Even More Generous With Your Dollars. The government advantage at the federal level is even more alarming. Total federal civilian compensation in 2008 averaged $119,982—more than twice the $59,908 in wages and benefits earned by the average private-sector employee. Federal employees in 1960 averaged $1.24 for every $1 earned by an American in the private sector. By 1980, that $1.24 had grown to $1.51; in 2000 it was up to $1.66. Now it is $2—and climbing.

39. The State of the Unions: Achievements, Problems, and Challenges Most union workers earn 10% - 20% more than nonunion workers. In 2008, 91% of Union workers had health insurance, compared to 58% of nonunion workers. 57% of union members had paid personal leave days compared to 38% of nonunion workers.

40. Unions and Compensation

41. Unions and Job Security Grievance procedures give workers represented by unions more protection against arbitrary dismissal than nonunion workers. Procedures in CBA’s make it harder and longer to try to dismiss a union employee. Over these stressful economic times employees have seen attempts to cut back benefits and have seen reductions in force-Answer-A Union Couldn’t Hurt-look at the statistics.

42. The Disparity Continues to Widen In 2009, 12.3 percent of the total U.S. work force was unionized, a drop from nearly a third during the mid and late Fifties. Among private-sector employees, only 7.2 percent belonged to a union last year; in the public sector, the figure was 37.4 percent. In absolute numbers, public sector employees have more members than their private sector counterparts - 7.9 million vs. 7.4 million. Indeed, even though the unemployment rate in 2009 rose to around 10 percent, total government employment grew by 16,000 to reach a record-high 22.5 million.

43. The Disparity Continues to Widen Another way of looking at this: the public sector topped 7.9 million, or 37.4 percent of all federal, state, and local government jobs. The share of government workers belonging to labor unions, in other words, is more than five times the unionized share of the private sector. Union membership in private industry peaked at 35.7 percent in 1953 and has dwindled ever since. In the public sector, unions surpassed that level years ago and show no sign of weakening.

44. The Disparity Continues to Widen In addition to being more expensive, the benefits that come with government jobs are provided to more employees. Life insurance, for example, was offered to 80 percent of employees working for the government but to just 59 percent of workers in the private sector. Traditional defined-benefit pension plans were available to 84 percent of government workers—but to only 21 percent of private employees.

45. Fear From Proposed Federal Legislation First, the law will trigger an explosion of state and local collective bargaining units. Creating these entities would require hundreds of millions, if not billions, of taxpayer dollars to negotiate contracts. Second, the incidence of strikes and work slowdowns may increase. States enacting public sector laws have experienceda 400 percent increase in job action activity, notes the Springfield, Va.-based National Right to Work Committee.

46. The Future Begins Now! PUBLIC-SECTOR UNIONS are here to stay and will fight to avoid giving any benefits back, and with their immense political clout, they will not be easily defeated. But neither will it be easy to ignore the widening deficits created by union benefits and salaries. We will watch the political pandering to the public sector union block and see Americans working in the private sector, whose standard of living is being eroded by higher taxes and fees and a shaky economy become more disheartened. In Florida we will see the jockeying for political position to see the ebb and flow of the Public Sector union game!

48. Assaulting the political theater for “binding arbitration.”

49. Tiered benefit contract provisions as benefits and provisions -“sunset.”

50. Revenue enhancements scrutinized by the public as inappropriate and “unconstitutional.”In Florida we will see some cities limiting any hiring of full time employees (only PT) –leasing employees will finally “catch on” and unions will try to legislatively force employees to be hired with benefits.

52. Reinventing Models For Systems That Can’t Be Sustained ( Health Care, Pay Plans & Job Descriptions, Portable Benefit Construction, and Pensions)

54. Renewed Political Focus-Back to the Activity of the 1970’s and Early 1980’s

55. More Specialty Training-Pensions, Benefits, Health Care

56. Using Technology To Keep Current Information Flowing To Management

57. More Training On-Line and Inter-Active.