Are Public Unions Necessary?

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Wisconsin is raising hell in its attempts to balance a budget that's heavily weighed down by union-bargained benefits for public employees. Of course, they're taking the "nuke it from orbit" approach and removing collective bargaining rights from public employees.

My question is this: Why do we have collective bargaining for public employees at all? After all, unions grew out of the need for a power capable of balancing that of capital. But there's no real need for that in the public sector, right? Public sector workers are extremely powerful in the political process, "selecting the elected officials with whom they (ultimately) bargain." There's the argument that government, sheltered as it is from immediate consequences and business incentives, is unresponsive to economic realities to begin with - and needing to kowtow to powerful unions only makes that worse. For most jobs, from what I can tell, skills that are valuable in the public sector are equally valuable, or more valuable, in the private sector. Someone who knows, and can enforce regulations is very useful for a company seeking to comply with them. Administrative work is largely similar between corporate and public jobs. So for many public employees there is no real need for unionization - the government's need to compete with the private sector should keep pay and benefits roughly commensurate, but there is some disparity in public employees' favor. FDR, famous backer of unions though he was, opposed public unions as "intolerable."

The counter-argument I've heard is that many fields only offer employment in the public sector (teachers spring to mind). This means that the same dynamic exists as existed between the Company Town bosses and the laborers. There, I can see an argument. But for government construction workers, plumbers, lawyers, and administrative personnel, skills are essentially fungible, and competition with the private sector for those skills should keep compensation competitive.

So what are your thoughts? I'll grant that teachers, social workers, and other gov't-exclusive jobs may need unions. But what about the rest? Why does the DMV clerk have a union membership?

ETA: My state's recent experience with unions in the public sector has been a case study in why they suck. In New Hampshire, our budget was seriously unbalanced (most of our tax base comes from property taxes, and as property values fell, so did gov't revenues), and we needed to cut public services. The unions refused to take job cuts, preferring instead to foist the additional costs off on local government (cities/towns). So we had more employees doing less work. Public services were worse-impacted because the Governor was forced to institute furlough days, rather than simply leaving everything open but with fewer staff members. In the meantime, our court system was forced to cut so deep they had to suspend trials for a month, and they're not even open normal business hours anymore. As a result, the courts are facing constitutional challenges for failure to provide speedy trials.

Comments

[kitlizzy.livejournal.com]

I work at a large university, and in my experiences with the union re: admin personnel, etc is that the union is needed not so much for the pay, as it to prevent bad supervisors/management/etc from abusing and/or firing staff for no good reason.

The unions don't only protect your pay, they protect you from power-tripping assholes. :P

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

But, of course, they *do* also protect your pay. And your job security from legitimate concerns. In New Hampshire, our budget was seriously unbalanced, and we needed to cut public services. The unions refused to take job cuts, preferring instead to foist the additional costs off on local government (cities/towns). So we had more employees doing less work. Public services were worse-impacted because the Governor was forced to institute furlough days, rather than simply leaving everything open but with fewer staff members. In the meantime, our court system was forced to cut so deep they had to suspend trials for a month, and they're not even open normal business hours anymore. As a result, the courts are facing constitutional challenges for failure to provide speedy trials.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Also, do admin personnel at private sector jobs need unions for this purpose? They seem to manage pretty well without them, after all.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Universities also have the issue of tenure, something that seems far more likely to lead to abuse than a collective agreement.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Even if I disagree, I get the argument regarding unions in the private sector. I'm 100% with you on the public sector unions, though - it's entirely unnecessary, and I kind of wish every state could get a Walker. This is walking the walk, period.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I'm going to come right out and say it: Public unions should be illegal.

[vnsplshr.livejournal.com]

This.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

I'd agree with that.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Except, as the info provided in the post points out, public sectors are less impacted by market forces, and thus less likely to be so slapped.

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

lawsuit!

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

How? Though the law.

We have discrimination laws, abuse laws, fair pay laws, whistleblower laws, etc. Each protecting all citizens alike. Which is supposed to be the role of the union. However the union's role has become redundent long ago because of these laws.

Why unions are still relevant is to apply these rights. Unions can fight on behalf of it's members and hire high priced lawyers etc.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

One option is to demonstrate a degree of competence, productivity and output that justifies above market salaries, benefits and job security.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

"The counter-argument I've heard is that many fields only offer employment in the public sector (teachers spring to mind). This means that the same dynamic exists as existed between the Company Town bosses and the laborers."

Bullshit.

There are thousands of private schools around the country at all levels of education but even if there weren't this could not set up a "company town" atmosphere because Schools are run at the local, or in some cases the State level so there is not just 1 employer, there are 52 different states and over 15,000 separate school districts that a teacher could work for.

Compare this to the job of an Aerospace or Automotive engineer, you've got something like 6 different companies you could work for in the US and maybe 50 globally.

With the way that schools are set up in this country there are more than enough different employers to set up a true competitive market for the services of teachers.


As far as Social Workers, no they are not only hired by the government, there are a lot of private "Employee Help Line" services that hire social workers as well but even if we restrict it to just the government you still have 50 different states, the Federal Government and a couple hundred cities, towns, and counties large enough to hire them. Once again there are more many more hiring agents than exist for a great many private sector careers.


In the end the only way you can grant public employees collective bargaining rights is if you restrict their voting rights, if not then you create a situation by which the Union wields hiring and firing power over those in management and with no need to make a profit and no risk of "going out of business" the unions can essentially demand and be guaranteed to receive any pay and benefits package that they want.

Restricted Vote for public employees

[russj.livejournal.com]

In the end the only way you can grant public employees collective bargaining rights is if you restrict their voting rights

I suspect that was the reasoning behind the creation of the District of Columbia, which has no representation in Congress.

They wanted to restrict the influence of the workers who wield such great bureaucratic power.

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

they're necessary for the democrats.

[tridus.livejournal.com]

(Usual disclaimer applies: I'm a bureaucrat.)

"selecting the elected officials with whom they (ultimately) bargain."

That's like saying McDonalds employees can select with whom they bargain by buying shares. Unless you're in a government town with no other real industry, those votes are drastically outnumbered by everybody else.

The real reason why public sector unions have gotten as powerful as they are is because for years (decades) politicians were simply unwilling to take them on in any serious way. We even have a recent example in Toronto with the garbage strike. There was a union asking for too much. The Mayor and City Council had something politicians don't usually have in these cases: overwhelming and rock-solid voter support to let them stay on strike and refuse the wage hikes being demanded. So what did the Mayor do? He folded like Superman on laundry day. He was then promptly removed from office and the new Mayor is moving to privatize the whole system, which will solve the problem anyway.

The difficulty is that while there's cases where the unions just get greedy and abusive (see Toronto garbage), there's other cases where the problem is with the politicians. Where I am, the public servants are currently all on a wage freeze that was brought in a couple years ago to help try and get spending under control. What did the elected officials do after getting that?

Why, they voted themselves a massive pay raise and a *doubling* of their pension benefits. They also jacked up spending everywhere because an election was coming up.

So now the fiscal situation is even worse. What's their solution? Why, now they want to impose a 5% wage cut on public servants (excluding themselves, of course). The union is pretty likely to fight that, and they should. It's not a real solution to the problem, and all it's going to accomplish is to drive out everybody skilled who can get better paying jobs in the private sector. If the goal is to have a less functional government, it'll work. If the goal is anything resembling sound fiscal policy, it's nonsense. (Since they'll just throw the savings into the black hole that is the health care budget, and then in 2 years go "oh no we're out of money, we need to cut again!")

Without the union, they'd probably get away with it because the government being in control of the legislature can just force through whatever it wants. Workers have every right to band together to fight against that kind of nonsense no matter what industry they work in.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Interesting that here, it's seen as employees v s. legislators. Normally I tend to see it as employees vs. taxpayers.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Here in Los Angeles we see all kinds of government cutbacks but the unified LA school district remains top-heavy with administration and systems where employment is always based on seniority and not competence seem like bad ideas to me.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

In the 90's the DC school system spent more per student than any other school system in the country, yet the schools sucked. The money was going to the administration.

[jlc20thmaine.livejournal.com]

What are dems afraid of? Why won't the party of "no" allow this bill to come to a vote?

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

No public unions aren't necessary, neither are corporations or anything else, and no they have no greater obligation to the wider market than any given organization operating in the economy. I detest the double-standard people have about unions.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Why do you think there is such a double standard?

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

I agree that many (most?) public sector jobs are in safe and fair working conditions. In that sense, they are not really necessary.

But they provide protection against unfair treatment that other people here have listed. Management screwing them on pay, getting fired for unfair reasons, working ridiculous hours without pay. Sometimes they take that defense too far, such as defending workers who are clearly incompetent, but in general they do still have a use.

And obviously, they should have the freedom of association and all that. I don't think very highly of compulsory membership or their donations to politicians who are supposed to negotiate with them later, but that's too much to get into for now. I'd also like to read up more on their history; why were they originally necessary?

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

Er, why were public employee unions originally necessary. I think we all know why labor unions in general were necessary.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

you shouldn't be asking why they have it so much better than you.

you should be asking why don't you have it so good.

Are public unions necessary? Yes.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Because the economy could not support the demands of unionized lawyers.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

My thoughts are that we could save 100 billion dollars by cutting every dime sent to GOP districts from the Federal government. I live in one so I'd be affected by this. My next thought is that the Blue States pay more into the United States than they take from it, the heartland....does not in the least do any of it. If people in the Blue States were so inclined they could leave the Red States in the lurch simply by refusing to foot the bills for the whiney ungrateful nephews who scream bloody murder at people who keep them in the black.

To use the family metaphor Right-Wingers so love, the Federal Government is a patriarch whose problems arise from having his responsible children going bankrupt while their resonsibility is labeled as treasonous by irresponsible people who waste money faster than coked up fratboys on Bourbon street. In truth if the USA gave a *damn* about fiscal conservatism it would do well to separate from the Red States and leave them to collapse under their own system.

Ironically they'd still have to take Texas with them because it's the only Red State that *does* pay its own way.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Off-target as always, considering most of this post is discussing union members employed by state and local governments.

[farchivist.livejournal.com]

What I find amusing is that the Wisconsin governor is promising not to lay off anyone if he gets this way. I'm sure nobody is buying that malarkey. If I were Governor, this is what I'd be doing once I got my way:

1) Fire everyone who had protested due to being "troublemakers" and "working against the best interests of the state of Wisconsin and its citizenry".
2) Institute a 30% mandatory pay cut for all remaining public sector employees. Designate their pension and health insurance plans as 'legacy' and not available for new employees.
3) Hire replacements for the people I fired at half the salary of what the positions were previously. Minimal health benefits possible, preferably with $5-10K deductible mandatory. No pension or 401K.
4) Any who complains will be painted as "liberal big government" while my cuts will be lauded as "essential to maintaining the balanced budget of the state".

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Yes, because if you work for the government, you never have to fight for a safe workplace, or the conditions under which you work and you never need protection from bad management...