28 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2018
“The workforce today is far more
diversified,” Durso continues. “So is
union membership. There is much
more participation involving women
and minorities.”
This reflects the labor movement’s
own diversification and organizing
strategy, focusing on bringing collective
bargaining to government and
service industries.
While the nation’s overall unionization
rate is currently about half
what it was a generation ago, unionization
is actually rising among government
employees, the healthcare
workforce and unskilled service
providers.
Greg DeFreitas, a Hofstra economist
who studies unionization,
reports that public sector union
membership rose from two-thirds of
all wage/salary employment in the
late 1980s to 73 percent by 2004-2006,
while over the same period the union
share of private sector workers
dropped from 18 to 13 per cent.
The effect on the regional economy
has been outsized. Through union
membership, hundreds of millions of
dollars in spending power has gone
to local teachers, police, program
administrators, secretaries, nurses,
lab technicians, janitors and domestic
workers.
Not only do these workers collect
bigger paychecks, they draw bigger
and more comprehensive benefit
packages as well. Their deductibles
are lower – sometimes zero. Multiple
vacations and extended holiday
weekends, once the stuff of fantasy,
now are taken for granted.
Last year, Professor DeFreitas
produced a remarkable study that
depicted the stark contrast between
union and non-union lives. He found
that the median Long Island union
paycheck is now more than 50 percent
higher than what’s earned by similar
non-union workers. Factor in health
insurance, fringe benefits, overtime
pay, employer pension contributions,
extended vacations, and pay-for-training,
and the gap widens considerably.
Local union growth continues. At
the L.I. Federation of Labor, affiliations
with the New York State Nurses
Association, two teamsters railroad
locals, the stagehands union and others
have helped expand membership
10 percent this decade. The Service
Employees International Union,
the nation’s fastest-growing service
union, has close to 5,000 L.I. members.
Meanwhile, public-sector retirement
and benefit packages continue
to pay off big time to select recipients.
James Feltman, the retired superintendent
of Commack’s schools,
collects the biggest school pension
checks in the state - more than
$325,600 annually. The next nine
educators on line are Long Islanders
too – every one of them.
Each year the Long Island exodus
continues toward places with more
reasonable costs of living. We’re
going to find a way to make living
on Long Island sustainable for all, or
this region will implode.
PERSONAL FINANCE
STATE OF L.I. UNIONS
continued from page 27
THEIR AVERAGE IS ABOVE
AVERAGE
Highest average pay among nonuniformed
employees: $89,755 paid to
12 Sands Point village employees
Highest per-pupil employee
benefit costs in state: $35,378, Fire
Island Union Free School District
(enrollment: 37 students)
Highest average pay reported for local
employee group: $220,088 paid to
Kings Point’s 20 police officers
Twenty-five of the 50 highest-paid
local employees in New York State
work for the Nassau County Police
Department.
Sources: Empire Center, U.S. Census Bureau,
USA Today
The median LI union paycheck is now more
than 50% higher than what the rest of us earn.
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