Animal control services are one of the prime municipal services ripe for privatization, either with for-profit veterinarians or (more commonly) non-profit animal welfare groups. For example, many of the cities on the Kansas side of the state line have contracted with Great Plains SPCA for shelter operations.

Kansas City has gone through a series of privatization efforts for both its animal shelter and animal control operations, as have many other cities and counties. Kansas City first outsourced its animal shelter to a private vet in 2009. The private operator saved taxpayers $175,000 and improved adoption rates at the same time. However, complaints regarding alleged animal abuse caused the city to terminate the contract in 2011 and briefly go back to city operation. Next, Kansas City turned over its animal shelter to KC Pet Project in 2012, and that privatization effort led to tax savings of $40,000 and a significant reduction in euthanasia for the animals. Later, in 2019, when Kansas City contracted with the same non-profit for animal control operations (e.g., capturing stray animals), city employees opposed it on familiar grounds:

City workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 500 worry about the loss of jobs and pensions if the city of Kansas City, Missouri, follows through with its plan to privatize the Animal Control Division.

Recently the operations of the shelter have been questioned due to a dispute between the non-profits that operate it. It seems the city will be retaking control of the shelter. Animal control operations are also apparently coming back under city control. Admittedly, one can see how capturing potentially dangerous animals is more of a police-like assignment than running adoptions from a shelter. I am not sure most volunteers are going to be enthusiastic about dealing with a wild, rabid pit bull.

Complaints about animal abuse, poor conditions, and more in animal shelters are common. As I said in a previous blog post, jails are hard places to operate, whether they are for people or animals. I suspect there is a core group of animal rights “volunteers” that are going to file complaints about any shelter that isn’t entirely a “no-kill” shelter. It doesn’t seem to matter if the shelter is operated by the government or by a non-profit.

The other part of this debate is that government employees are never going to stop fighting to bring back jobs and assignments that were contracted out. We have seen efforts to retake government control with Kansas City trash operations and University City ambulance services, to give just two examples. I don’t automatically believe the “complaints” filed against private providers in these situations. As a resident of University City, I can assure you that bringing the ambulance operations back under city (and fireman’s union) control was an orchestrated political plan.

Is this the case with the animal shelter and control operations in Kansas City? I don’t know. For the sake of the animals, I hope it works out for the best.

The post Concerns about Kansas City Animal Control Operations appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In the aftermath of the decision, government unions were unable to convince many non-members to become full-fledged members and pay dues. As I discussed in a previous post, union financial reports submitted to the Department of Labor show the National Education Association lost the 88,000 non-member agency fee payers it had in 2017. And the Americans Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union lost 110,000 agency fee payers. The financial reporting of another large public-sector union, the American Federation of Teachers, does not reflect the impact of Janus because its reporting period ended in the same month as the decision. However, a new report from the Freedom Foundation states that “union spokespeople indicate the union lost nearly all 85,000 agency fee-payers it had at the time of the decision.”

As Kovacs notes later in the piece, the Janus decision doesn’t only affect non-member fee payers, who in many states were the primary beneficiaries of the case, but also union members themselves. As the ruling notes, “Unless employees clearly and affirmatively consent before any money is taken from them, this standard [for waiving one’s First Amendment rights] cannot be met.”

But are union members aware of these rights? Kovacs persuasively suggest that the answer is no, and that state law can still act as a barrier to securing these rights.

Prior to the Janus decision, workers who wished to opt-out of union membership were restricted by what are known as window periods. For example, in Michigan, many public employees could only leave their union once a year during a short period of time in August. Other window periods only permitted members to leave the union for a brief time period around the anniversary of their hiring.

Despite the text of the decision that allows workers to resign union membership nearly at any time, labor unions are still blocking workers who want to leave by enforcing these invalid window periods. In a recent case, Hendrickson v. AFSCME, New Mexico public employee Brett Hendrickson, represented by the Liberty Justice Center, was prohibited from exercising his Janus rights to resign from union membership. Hendrickson, a quality control specialist for the New Mexico Human Services Department, attempted to leave AFSCME Council 18 and stop dues from being deducted from his paycheck, but was told he could only opt-out during a narrow window period. This is just one of many examples of unions coercing worker to continue paying dues and undermining their First amendment rights.

To what extent Missouri government workers are having their rights curtailed is the subject of rigorous debate. For instance, a court injunction against House Bill (HB) 1413, which reformed much of Missouri’s labor law framework, has created uncertainty as to what the law is on basic issues like union membership and representation. Also, collective bargaining agreements in the state were (to be generous) lightly overseen by the state even before HB 1413 became law, meaning that violations of workers’ rights could be ongoing—and hardly anyone would know about it. Fortunately, Missouri did not technically allow for “fair share fees” of the sort that Janus put an end to nationwide, so many Missouri workers had at least incidental knowledge of their labor rights in the Show-Me State. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.

The better educated workers are about their rights, the better off they will be. Especially in this post-Janus legal environment, that educational process is more important than ever.

The post Are Government Unions Adequately Informing Workers of Their Rights? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Two months have now passed since our lawsuit was filed, and so far, the case is proceeding relatively slowly, which we expected. Unsurprisingly, the Office of Administration didn’t immediately surrender and decide to just hand over the documents it’s been giving the AFSCME, so we are still anticipating the case will carry on well into next year. In the interest of transparency, I would have hoped that the OA would have simply provided these documents to us without further delay—transparency for AFSCME should also mean transparency for the rest of the public. But unfortunately, it may take a judge to affirm this notion.

A little more surprising is the fact that AFSCME itself has decided to try and intervene in the case, arguing it has a stake in the resolution of this case. That’s surprising because our litigation doesn’t address AFSCME’s actions, but rather the actions of the government. Time will tell what becomes of this intervention, if anything.

We’ll continue to keep you posted on this important case.

The post Show-Me Institute v. Office of Administration: A Brief Update appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When?Janus vs. AFSCME?was decided earlier this summer, its immediate effect was on the 22 states that allowed government unions to collect agency fees from workers. Thanks to?Janus, those government workers can no longer be compelled to support a union as a condition of employment. But fortunately, workers in Missouri had those rights already by statute, namely Missouri Revised Statute §105.510. That section makes clear a number of things, but relevant to the agency fee discussion?is this?(emphasis mine): 

For instance, Crystal City in Jefferson County appears to have amended an existing agreement on March 26 of this year to add a provision requiring employees to pay and become union members, to pay the union the amount of union dues but not be a member, or be fired.?Page 13:

Meanwhile in a contract agreed to this past June, the City of Grandview also included in its contract with Grandview Firefighters, Local No. 42, a provision compelling non–union members to support the union’s activities through a “modified agency shop.” Page 2 of the agreement: 

The post Agency Fees in Government Aren’t Allowed in Missouri, But That Didn’t Stop Some Local Governments appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That isn’t to say the issue doesn’t crop up from time to time. In 2013 non-union officers in Kansas City had their employment threatened by the union when they refused to cough up money for the union’s activities. And while that incident is an exception to the Missouri rule, it’s an episode that supporters of good government in Missouri have to keep in mind as they survey the policy landscape post-Janus. 

Indeed, Janus brings with it the opportunity to reassess public policies that generally provide considerable latitude to government unions. Most states have a laws on the subject that are literally to the left of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, since Roosevelt himself was highly skeptical of collective bargaining and traditional unionization among government workers. Not only does the risk persist that a union could elect members into government to negotiate them sweetheart contracts, but the prospect of a company’s failure that faces private labor negotiations hardly ever truly attaches to a government agency—if economic conditions go sideways, taxes can be raised, services can be reduced, or some combination of the two could take place to protect the government union’s interests.

Point being, government unions have been given a wide berth to operate over the last half-century, and it is overdue that the latitude they’ve been granted was reviewed—in light not only of the law and the Constitution, as will happen in Janus, but of good policy as well. Government union members, non-union government employees, and taxpayers certainly deserve better than the status quo.

The post In Janus, A National Reexamination of Government Unions appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In 1959 Congress passed the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), a powerful set of protections for unionized workers and a much-needed check on the power of union executives. Among other things, the LMRDA required all private sector unions to disclose their finances annually in what are called “LM filings.”

The impact of the LMRDA was huge. Although it didn’t fix everything, workers and journalists were better able to discover instances of self-dealing by looking through LM filings. In many cases this meant a better, more responsive union. The lack of secrecy in union finances is still helping workers hold their union leadership accountable.

Unfortunately, the LMRDA does not apply to Missouri’s government unions. As a result, public sector workers have no easy way of finding out where their dues go, which hinders their ability to question the use of these funds. Self-dealing schemes like the kind this AFSCME executive took part in become harder to uncover when union finances are not transparent.

Our public sector workers deserve the same level of protection that private sector workers have enjoyed for decades. It’s time to close the gap between the public and private sectors. Government unions should be at least as transparent as their private sector counterparts.

The post Kansas City Government Union Embezzlement Shows Need for Greater Transparency appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

So how low cost are union elections? If the state contracts out with a company that specializes in providing elections, the price tag could be less than 1% of union dues.

When Wisconsin contracted with the American Arbitration Association (AAA) to provide union elections for its public employees, the cost was about $1.50 per voter per election. AAA is a well respected arbitration firm, but there are other options. For example, a service called “Election Buddy” by Event IQ, Inc., conducts elections for Harvard and Yale Universities and thousands of other companies internationally for approximately 9 cents per voter. $0.09 to $1.50 is a wide range, but even at the top end of that range, elections are inexpensive.

For comparison purposes, consider the dues charged to state employees by some of the major government unions. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) charges Missouri state employees $16.93 per pay period, or $406.32 per year. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) charges patient care professional employees $22.50 per pay period, or $540 per year. Even if the state contracts with a more expensive arbitration firm, rather than a relatively less costly corporate election firm, and ends up charging each union around $1.50 per voter, with an election every two years that’s less than two dollars out of the $812.64 AFSMCE collects per person during that period or the $1,080.00 SEIU collects.

Contracting out for union election is just one way of saving money. By contracting out for elections, the state will not need to hire additional staff, pay for increased travel expenses for staff conducting elections, or purchase new voting equipment. The savings will allow the state to charge a much lower fee to unions for conducting these elections, saving public employees money.

The post Just How Low Cost Is Labor Reform? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Jeff Mazur, AFSCME executive, claims that the union’s fight is with politicians who would rather spend money on corporate welfare, such as tax credits and publicly funded stadiums. I’ve written favorably before about AFSCME’s opposition to corporate welfare, and a publicly funded football stadium is corporate welfare at its worst. I’m glad more people, including labor organizations, are seeing the stadium proposal for what it is.

The post Even AFSCME Opposes the Stadium “Boondoggle” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri has nearly the lowest cost of living in the country. Each dollar I spend in Missouri goes quite a bit further than it would in a high cost-of-living state, such as California or Maryland. As a result, residents of low cost-of-living states, even if paid less, might be able to afford more than people working the same job in a high cost-of-living state. A comparison of pay among the states that does not adjust for regional differences in the cost of necessities like rent, food, and gas is not very meaningful.

A better way to determine whether state employees are underpaid would be to compare state employee compensation with the pay of people performing similar jobs in the private sector. How much do maintenance workers, office clerks, and lawyers make working for the government versus working for a private business located in Missouri?

Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine of American Enterprise Institute looked at state employee compensation this way. They found that in Missouri state employees often make more—by an average of 7 percent—than comparable private-sector workers when the value of benefits is factored in. In other words, Missouri state workers are not in urgent need of an across-the-board pay increase; in fact, they’re often compensated more generously than their private-sector counterparts.

Perhaps we shouldn’t fault AFSCME for using misleading information to suggest that Missouri state employees are underpaid. It’s not AFSCME’s job to conduct a serious study of the adequacy of public employee pay; AFSCME’s job is to get more for its members. Members of the public should keep this in mind any time a government union issues a statement on public policy.

The post Surprising No One, Big Government Union Wants State to Spend More appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

From the release:

Boeing, a top recipient of federal grants, tax credits, loans, loan guarantees and bailout assistance, received more state and local subsidy money than any other company. In 2013, Boeing got the largest tax break awarded to a single company in any state’s history: $8.7 billion, an enticement for the company to build its 777X plane in Washington state. The company told state lawmakers it would pursue other options if it didn’t receive a sweet deal from the Legislature, along with concessions from workers.

My colleagues at the Show-Me Institute have written about corporate welfare packages directed at Boeing before. See Exhibit B:

• Outrageous: After Denying You Tax Cuts, State Officials Return Monday To Give Boeing One Instead
• The Finer Details Of The Boeing Incentive Package
• Education Establishment On Boeing Tax Subsidies: Crickets
• It’s Official: Boeing To Keep 777X Construction In Washington State

With free-market think tanks and government unions both critical of corporate welfare, it’s surprising that the states haven’t done a better job of addressing issues like TIFs, tax credits, tax abatements, enterprise zones, public stadium funding, et cetera.

Depending on who you ask, Missouri is one of the top states in corporate welfare. I hope we can all agree: This needs to change.

The post Finally Some Agreement: Get Corporations Off the Dole appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I previously wrote about the government union transparency gap and a bill addressing it, but if you are a government worker subject to union representation, not knowing where your dues go is only part of the problem. In many cases, you also have very little say in who represents you, and you have no recourse to ensure that your voice is heard. That’s why we need reform that would give all unionized public employees the ability to vote in regular union elections.

Consider the example of personal care attendants enrolled in the state’s consumer-directed health care program. Attendants get paid out of a state-managed program to take care of home-bound Missourians. In 2009, the attendants had an election to determine whether they would all be represented by the Missouri Home Care Union, a joint local union affiliated with both AFSCME and SEIU.

Out of 13,151 eligible voters, only 2,085 voted for the union. According to the state board running these elections, 294 ballots were challenged and 1,405 voters voted against the election. The challenged ballots plus the number of votes against the union were not enough to affect the outcome of the election. So in a low-turnout election with hundreds of challenged ballots, less than 16 percent of personal care attendants were able to force union representation on every other person enrolled in this program.

You might think, “Well, that’s just democracy. If you don’t vote, you deserve the representation you’re given.” The problem is that after a one-time election there will not be another election unless workers organize and go through a notoriously difficult decertification process. Depending on how a union contract is written, the union may even sue workers for trying to decertify the union or supporting another union. There’s nothing democratic about voting for a representative once and then being stuck with the results indefinitely.

If public employees are going to be subject to union representation against their will, then they at least should get a regular vote so that they can hold their union accountable. The Missouri Legislature has a bill, SB 549, that would require these regular elections. Regular union elections could help ensure that public employees, like teachers, police, and firefighters, are only subject to unions that work for them.

The post Bill Would Give Workers a Vote appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In the Show-Me State, one big difference is that unions representing public workers, like teachers, police, and firefighters, are not required to be as transparent as traditional private-sector unions. Whereas your neighbor who works for a private business can look up his union’s financial filings and see how union executives use his dues, the dues-paying teacher down the block can be left in the dark about where his membership fees are going. This transparency gap is unfair for workers, but it should also alarm the public, which negotiates with government unions and pays for the services provided by union labor.

So why do private-sector unions share information about their finances with the public, while Missouri’s government unions do not?

Federal law requires most unions to make annual filings that disclose basic financial information, including assets, liabilities, and money spent on political activities. The federal government makes these filings publicly available and searchable online. This way, a member of the public, including a dues-paying worker, can see how their union spends money. However, federal labor law does not apply to unions representing state and local government employees.

Other states, such as Michigan, have enacted some financial transparency requirements for their government unions. These state laws ensure state and local government unions that fall through the cracks in federal law still have some basic standards of financial transparency. Unfortunately, Missouri lags behind.

Right now, the Missouri Legislature is taking up a government union accountability bill (SB 549) that aims to correct this disparity between private-sector unions and government unions. Among other things, the bill would require government unions to disclose their finances in an annual filing very similar to the LM filings that private-sector unions already make. These filings would allow workers and the public to see how government unions spend taxpayer-funded union dues.

Government unions should be at least as transparent as private-sector unions. Bringing government union transparency up to the same level as private-sector union transparency is simply common sense.

The post Bill Addresses Government Union Transparency Gap appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That’s what makes support for a minimum wage increase from unions and big business seem so odd at first glance. Why would unions such as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) support a change of policy that would hurt hundreds of thousands of Americans? Why would some businesses want to increase the cost of labor?

A few reasons stand out.

For starters, artificially raising the cost of non-union labor can make union labor more attractive. As the Cato Institute noted more than a decade ago:

Unions are labor cartels that attempt to restrict the supply of workers entering given occupations. Since non-union labor is priced below the cartelized price of union labor, it is an attractive substitute for union workers. Because unionization of all potential competition to the cartel is impossible due to the high policing costs that would be involved, unions resort to the minimum wage. By artificially increasing the wage rate of lower skilled workers — who could substitute for union workers — the minimum wage increase the demand for union workers and hence their wage rates.

Hypothetically speaking, if the labor of an entry-level employee with no experience is worth $7.50 per hour in the open market but the law requires he be paid $15 per hour, trained union labor costing $20 per hour looks considerably more attractive. By harming non-union labor, unions are able to help themselves.

Moreover, some large businesses have supported increasing the minimum wage because it would harm their competition. Costco, for instance, supports raising the minimum wage today at least in part because the entry-level wage for a Costco employee is $11.50, more than $4 per hour above the federal minimum. At a minimum wage of $10.10 per hour, Costco’s business model would remain largely unaffected.

But you know who would be affected by the change in the law? Businesses, large and small, whose profit margins are far narrower. That’s especially true of small businesses in our communities already suffering under a mountain of tax and regulatory burdens in a difficult economy.

Yes, there are, no doubt, some in both the business and labor camps who in good faith might think a minimum wage increase won’t hurt our vulnerable poor. But labor and business leadership know better, and the economics are as clear as the incentives.

The post Why Would Unions And Some Big Businesses Support Raising the Minimum Wage? Some Reasons appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri state workers are not a privileged class. They are the lowest-paid of any in the country. The median pay for state employees providing direct care services in Missouri is about $22,700 annually. That’s $22,000 a year for citizens who give treatment and dignity to those with severe disabilities at the Nevada Habilitation Center.

In reality, state workers are paid more than the author claims. Using Show-Me Living to find salary data for public employees in Missouri, I found that the median earnings of public employees is actually much higher — it’s $29,923. Plus, in 2009, 38 percent of percent all state workers (including full-time and part-time workers) made more than $40,000. There are 560 employees on the government’s payroll who earned more than $100,000 in 2009. Gov. Jay Nixon himself made $123,970 that year. On the list of highest paid public employees, he only ranks 101.

2009 Gross Pay for State Worker In Missouri (includes FT and PT)
(Source: Show Me Living, n = 65,535)

In the editorial, McEntee gets the $22,700 figure by restricting his view to “those providing direct care services” in Missouri. The author makes a mistake by focusing on a small group of state workers. He doesn’t take into account the wages and salaries of all public employees in Missouri. It’s not possible to determine from the article which job roles he is lumping into this category, nor is it possible to determine whether they are full- or part-time positions.

There are many, many types of workers who provide direct care services and who have salaries higher than $22,000. In fact, the highest-paid people on the state government’s payroll work in a direct care capacity. In 2009, the highest-paid person by the state government was a physician in the mental health department, and this person earned $301,991. He’s certainly not alone in his income bracket. In 2009, six individuals earned more than $200,000: three physicians, a medical director, and two health administrators. (I used the Show-Me Living web tool for government payroll to find this information.)

Overall, public employees are making more than employees in the private sector. According to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis:

Compensation by Industry — Year 2009
(Source: BEA)

I haven’t studied the strict definitions of “compensation” and “wage and salary disbursements,” but I suspect that the difference between these two figures likely includes the cost of pensions, health insurance, etc. In either metric, workers in the public sector make more than workers in the private sector.

The post Missouri Public Workers Are Paid Much More Than President of Labor Union Claims appeared first on Show-Me Institute.