背景：
Thats Outrageous -- Government Employees Undeserved Earnings
For public workers nationwide, a "sick day" can be code for a fat paycheck. These employees have been cashing in their unused sick time for eye-popping -- and budget-busting -- sums. Take Chicago Public Schools administrator William E. McGowan. He retired last year after 35 years with the school system and 315 unused sick days under his belt. McGowan was paid his 2004 salary of $422 for every unused sick day (even though he acquired some of them while a young teacher making just $40 a day), which ultimately led to a $133,000 cashout. Pretty healthy, eh?
It's happening everywhere. Two years ago, in Avon, Massachusetts, a police chief, retiring after 42 years on the force, turned 450 unused sick days into a check for more than $60,000. But he didn't make out as well as seven government retirees in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, who received at least $100,000 each from 2001 to 2002.
Before we congratulate all these folks on their great health, let's stop to ask who's footing these payout bonanzas, which go to everyone from firefighters to teachers to prison guards in cities and states around the country. You've probably already guessed it: you and I do.
It is a taxpayer burden that adds up fast enough to make your head spin. In 2002, the city of Dallas paid its employees $6.2 million for unused sick time. According to The Boston Globe, a couple of years ago, local governments in the greater Boston area paid out nearly $30 million. From 2001 to 2002, Pennsylvania gave its state employees $32 million for their unused sick time.
The logic here is crazy. Sick days are supposed to be a humane break for workers feeling under the weather. Paying those who were lucky enough to avoid illness is tantamount to creating a health lottery.
Worst of all is the financial impact. While people are struggling to pay extraordinary fuel costs and are coping with low wages and job layoffs, it's infuriating to see tax dollars spent on healthy workers -- never mind the intense frustration felt by truly sick people who cannot afford their medical bills. Unused sick time has become a backdoor way to boost the pay of government employees.
"This is a handout," says Rutgers labor economist Leo Troy. "Governments that have made these tremendous concessions then complain that they can't meet their bills." All of which means that as public workers continue to amass unused sick days, a multibillion-dollar balloon is waiting to burst. What will the government do then? Raise taxes or cut services.
It's one example of how government can operate in ways businesses could never dream of. Labor Department surveys in the late '90s of workers at mid- and large-sized Businesses and workers at state and local governments found that nearly all public employees got paid sick leave, while only around half of private employees did. Most public workers could also carry over unused sick time from one year to the next -- usually without limit. That's a practice almost unheard of in the private sector.
There's no reason that government workers should receive this benefit. A Labor Department study of wages found that the mean hourly earnings of state and local government workers in 2004 were actually more than $5 an hour higher than those of private-sector employees.
It's almost like public- and private-sector workers are living in two different worlds. Businesses have to battle in a competitive marketplace, while governments can always borrow money or raise taxes.
"In the private sector they have to worry about the bottom line. They can't kick the problem down the road because stockholders would say, 'Wait a minute!' But government can be irresponsible," says Stanford University political science professor Terry Moe.
Since the average taxpayer usually doesn't follow the fine print of union contracts, politicians dole out cushy benefits that taxpayers may not notice. It's not hard to understand why politicians would reward public-employee unions: They tend to be some of the best-organized, highest-spending interest groups in politics.
Take the case of former California Governor Gray Davis. When facing recall in 2003, Davis sought to rein in an out-of-control budget by postponing a promised raise to the California State Employees Association. Instead, Davis gave them benefits -- like 12 extra days of vacation per worker. A few weeks later, the union donated $250,000 to Davis's unsuccessful effort to fight the recall.
Now, Governor Schwarzenegger is struggling with a budget emergency caused in part by deals like this. "Most politicians are only going to be in office for a short time. So it's fine for them to create financial obligations that are going to be imposed on their successors," says Moe.
At a time when America is straining to support our troops and victims of natural disaster, spending millions of tax dollars to reward people for being healthy is enough to, well, make you sick.
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