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By Root 1161 0

In this regard, New York is not alone. Throughout the public and private sector, unfunded pension liabilities—over $8 billion in New York City—loom just over the horizon. Like New York pols, most leaders prefer making shortterm decisions, pushing the pain off to another generation. The largest single program in the federal budget—$133 billion in fiscal 1979—is for Social Security. Yet the Congress has traditionally awarded more benefits without imposing more costs. As the babyboom children get older, and the birth rate continues to shrink, there will be more retirements and fewer people to pay the required Social Security taxes. As inflation shrinks the value of the dollar, the prospect dawns that an intolerably high burden will be placed on future taxpayers, setting the stage for a kind of class warfare—young vs. old—that America, unlike other societies, has traditionally avoided. The problem afflicts the corporate world as well. According to Fortune magazine, “Ten of the top 100 corporations on the Fortune 500 (in 1977) have unfunded pension liabilities equal to a third or more of their net worth, and total uncovered benefits for all corporations exceed $50 billion.” In 1977, military pensions cost $8.4 billion. By the year 2000, at current rates they will jump to $34 billion. Over the next decade, a recent federal study found, pension plans covering 1.3 million people could fold, forcing the federal insurance program to make good. “The total unfunded liability of social security, military, and federal, state, and local employee pensions is about $5 trillion,” reported my favorite magazine, the iconoclastic Washington Monthly. “At current rates, it’s a debt equal to the total national budget for the next 20 years.”

Comparative government salaries and fringes also invite dispute. The Temporary Commission on City Finances reported in 1977 that New York salaries were way out of line. Jack Bigel’s Program Planners, Inc., countered that New York trails most large cities. Bienstock says city wages are becoming more competitive. The Congressional Budget Office claims that wages are not out of line in New York but that fringes are. Candidate Koch asserted that city wages were above comparable public and private jobs. The Office of Labor Relations prepared a report for the Mayor-elect, suggesting he was wrong. After reading it, the Mayor told me, “For my part, I don’t believe it.”

Confused? You should be. There has never been a comprehensive comparative study of total compensation—including overtime, pay increments, night shift differential, longevity pay, annuity payments, fringe and pension benefits, worker contributions to pensions and health and welfare and Social Security benefits. Nor has any study divided a worker’s total compensation by the key measure—actual hours worked. New York municipal workers tend, for instance, to work a shorter week. Most work 35 hours, compared to 37.5 in New York State and 40 in California, the U.S. Government and the manufacturing industry. To compare the salaries of a New York fireman, who averages about 40 hours a week, and a San Diego fireman, who averages 56, is meaningless. It doesn’t tell us their hourly rate of pay. Nor does it tell whether they both receive a paid lunch, paid wash-up time, coffee breaks, administrative time, cost-of-living adjustments, built-in overtime. A New York City bus driver is paid an average salary of $15,000. But he also, according to the Economic Development Council, receives at least $3,500 in built-in overtime and $6,500 in fringe benefits. On an annual basis, they found, the driver’s hourly pay averaged $24,413.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which presumably should collect these figures, does not. Instead, they release skimpy and thus misleading data. For example, the Bureau’s comparison table of twenty-five cities as of September 1976 reveals that in five city job categories New York ranked 9th in clerical pay, 7th in skilled maintenance pay, 7th in janitorial pay, 3rd in sanitation pay and 2nd in public safety. Yet the bottom of the page contains