some #'s and econ theory on public unions

A nice post from Blue County in a Red State...

If I were dictator for a day, I would abolish public employee unions because of stuff like this:

In public-sector America things just get better and better. The common presumption is that public servants forgo high wages in exchange for safe jobs and benefits. The reality is they get all three. State and local government workers get paid an average of $25.30 an hour, which is 33% higher than the private sector's $19, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Throw in pensions and other benefits and the gap widens to 42%.

For New York City's 281,000 employees, average compensation has risen 63% since 2000 to $107,000 a year. New Jersey teaching veterans receive $80,000 to $100,000 for ten months' work. In California prison guards can sock away $300,000 a year with overtime pay.

Four in five public-sector workers have lifetime pensions, versus only one in five in the private sector. The difference shifts huge risks from government to private-sector workers.

Public labor unions are interesting to an economist. On the one hand, they're often dealing with an entity that has some monopoly power in labor markets. This makes unions a more reasonable outcome-- to deal with the bargaining power of the govt in those settings.

But govt, of course, also has a (stronger?) tendency to blow money-- since they're spending our money and we have little incentive to keep close track of it. This would result in artificially high compensation.

Which effect dominates? A key indication is that people really want to get into govt jobs, strongly implying that the jobs are quite attractive in terms of compensation.