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.

[kitlizzy.livejournal.com]

That's the kind of thing that makes me be embarrassed to be part of a union, honestly. Our U just had a furlough as well and the union was outraged about it - but I'd rather lose those days of my pay than have other people lose their jobs. (Neverminding the union's constant goings-on about the need to "chop from the top" by cutting the salaries of the people making more than $200K. You get what you pay for when you hire Deans, I'm just saying.)

I did not have a choice about being a union or not - if I want this job, I *have* to pay the dues. I would agree with the concept of letting people decide whether or not they want to be union or not except then you start running into intimidation issues and a weakening of the union's leverage to get things done, and then things are even more of a mess.

Perhaps if we made adequately funding education and public services a priority, we wouldn't need the unions around to get up on their soapboxes and yell about the problems we have.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I did not have a choice about being a union or not - if I want this job, I *have* to pay the dues.

Another issue I have with unions in general is that compulsory element. If I'm OK with going it alone on my benefits package, why should I join the union? Why should the other employees get to dictate what I get paid? Why can't I keep my job if I'm willing to take less than they are?

[kitlizzy.livejournal.com]

I was pretty pissed about not having a choice when I was hired, myself....but then, if I'd opted out, I would have gotten canned 3 months in because I unknowingly walked into a totally batshit department with a psycho supervisor. Almost everyone else I worked with there has either gotten "reorganized" or found a position somewhere else as swell. So...*shrugs*

I do think it's really important to protect teacher's pay and jobs, because they get so little and the whole education system is so messed up already. Cutting teachers and cutting their pay is not good for anyone.

[kitlizzy.livejournal.com]

I should add that re: the idea of "if I want to accept less pay, why can't I" ultimately creates a bad precedent where if you're willing to take $15/hour instead of $17, then no one will pay employees more than $15/hour, and then the next round of layoffs or whatever, and it drops to $12/hour and so on. So you're not really dropping just your pay, you're basically dropping everyone else's too. And if you're only making $10/hour to start, going down to $8/hour could really screw you over.

It's not always going to do this, but if employers know they can hire people for cheaper, they will, and then we start running into the same problems that required instituting a minimum wage.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

And then we have the opposite problem where we have to outsource all the jobs because the labor rates here aren't lined up with reality.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

"Perhaps if we made adequately funding education and public services a priority, we wouldn't need the unions around to get up on their soapboxes and yell about the problems we have. "


ROTFL what a joke

We spend too much on education. FAR too much.

Also there is no need for a union to protect employees from bad bosses. Simple marketplace economics will handle that for you.

Simply put bad bosses who fire good employees for no good reason pretty quickly find themselves in a position where no good employees will work for them and the performance of their department begins to fall. When that happens Bad Boss is replaced by his Boss.

In fact that Union only makes things worse by protecting that bad boss from himself and handing him a rigid bureaucratic framework in which to play his power games and with the antagonistic relationship unions take towards Management an excuse for why nothing is getting done.

[kitlizzy.livejournal.com]

Simply put bad bosses who fire good employees for no good reason pretty quickly find themselves in a position where no good employees will work for them and the performance of their department begins to fall. When that happens Bad Boss is replaced by his Boss.

That's assuming of course that the Boss chain isn't rotten all the way to the top. ;)

I have a lot of freinds and relatives who teach in public schools and it is pretty miserable out there. The pay is very low for the teachers, and there are too many kids per teacher, and there isn't money for supplies or materials - if we're going to make education mandatory, it needs to be more than a 12 year long subsidized daycare service.

And there is also the social and economic benefit to a country of having a educated and skilled population.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Are you drunk? Have you seen what a poor public school is like? We're getting stomped by kids in second world countries on test scores so clearly the answer is pumping less into education? That makes no damn sense at all.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Education Spending at the national level has increased at about twice the rate of inflation for more than 30 years.

Nationwide school enrollment has fallen steadily for the last 20 years as the Boomer and Gen X Generations left school and the Much smaller Gen Y and Millenial generations came along.

More Money + Fewer Students and yet educational performance has at best stagnated and more likely fallen back significantly.

Further it is now cheaper to send a child to private school in most cities than it is to send them to the public schools. A mere 10 years ago that was not the case and yet private schools still continually outperform public schools.


No, the issue is not that we do not spend enough money.

Clearly the issue is we spend TOO MUCH money in all the wrong places.

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

Health care spending has increased at more than twice the rate of inflation for more than 30 years, and that's a substantial part of "education" spending. Salaries for college graduates have also outpaced inflation, as have most service-based industries (as opposed to manufacturing).

In Houston, private schools are certainly not cheaper. From what I know of other cities, almost no private schools are cheaper.

While the educational system could certainly be better in lots of ways, poverty explains nearly the entire problem:

To justify their campaign, ed reformers repeat, mantra-like, that U.S. students are trailing far behind their peers in other nations, that U.S. public schools are failing. The claims are specious. Two of the three major international tests—the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Trends in International Math and Science Study—break down student scores according to the poverty rate in each school. The tests are given every five years. The most recent results (2006) showed the following: students in U.S. schools where the poverty rate was less than 10 percent ranked first in reading, first in science, and third in math. When the poverty rate was 10 percent to 25 percent, U.S. students still ranked first in reading and science. But as the poverty rate rose still higher, students ranked lower and lower. Twenty percent of all U.S. schools have poverty rates over 75 percent. The average ranking of American students reflects this. The problem is not public schools; it is poverty. And as dozens of studies have shown, the gap in cognitive, physical, and social development between children in poverty and middle-class children is set by age three." (http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781)

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

What we've done is shovel money into the schools, centralize things more and more, and the result has been falling further behind. Does pumping more money make sense? How much is enough?

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

It's just like Keynseian stimulus. Enough is never enough. A little more is always the answer. This is why my town of less than 2000 people and no crime has 6 police sgts. making more than $100K a year.

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

What has been centralized more and more? States set guidelines, buy textbooks, do their own testing, etc. School boards and principals do the hiring and firing and run the actual operations.

And yes, how much is enough? People complain about education spending without putting forth any ideas about the most efficient way to run our system.

[tridus.livejournal.com]

Simply put bad bosses who fire good employees for no good reason pretty quickly find themselves in a position where no good employees will work for them and the performance of their department begins to fall. When that happens Bad Boss is replaced by his Boss.

You clearly don't work in the bureaucracy.

Bad bosses also tend to be the ones best at playing office politics, and will wind up getting promoted while blaming everybody else for what is going wrong. Something only gets done about it when that guys department does something so ridiculous that it makes the evening news, thus forcing people at the top of the chain to act.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

That marketplace economics theory of yours might work well in a Disney cartoon, but this is the real world.

In the real world a person sends out "X" number of resumes while looking for work. It's rare to get to competing job offers at same time, so when an reasonable job offer comes in, most people will take the job offer. Personal economics (of having rent/mortgage, bills, food, expenses) means the rumour warning of this being a bad boss (or company) to work for falls of deaf ears. Folks cannot afford to pass up paying jobs because boss is bad. Folks figure they can/will put up with the bullshit as long as bills are getting paid.

In theories of marketplace economics it is purposed that companies offering inferior products/services should wither up and die. Fact is shitty companies often survive despite being overpriced crapola. And superior quality companies often go the way of the dinosaur.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Yes, and what does that good employee do once they get the job with the crappy boss?

That's right, they grin, bear it, and put their resume right back up on Monster.

As far as shitty companies survive by producing shitty overpriced crapola, sure they do, for a while. They might even do it forever if there is a market for shitty overpriced crapola, and for some things there is always room for that and enough fools who will buy into marketing hype to keep a few of these companies in business.

Still though those companies only survive by giving the fools in society what they want. The companies have no power, only the consumers of their products do and those consumers can shut those companies down almost overnight if their preferences shift.

The same goes for workers. This argument that the company has all the power is utter BS. Yes it is true that we all need to eat and will take any job that comes along, no matter how shitty in a time of need, the question is how many of us are dumb enough to stay in them for one minute longer than we have too? Not very many.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

I never argued the company has all the power. No one entity does. Power is struggled for and fought over. Pen being mightier then sword, therefore tactics are less heavyhanded then they have been in the past (when big business would have had cops and judges in back pocket and organizers would disappear ( like the Blair Mountain strike (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain)).

But to back off and suggest that free market can sort everything out is simply naive and ignorant.

I actually don't believe unions are all that necessary in the 21rst century. Many should be dismantled and disorganized because they impede good production, fair competition, etc.

Still the reason that unions are born in the first place is because the free market has a shitty reputation for sorting things out. The free market needs teethers just like free people. Otherwise there is chaos.

[farchivist.livejournal.com]

Also there is no need for a union to protect employees from bad bosses. Simple marketplace economics will handle that for you.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
If simple marketplace economics handled that, Dunning-Kruger effect wouldn't exist. But don't take my word for it; go here (http://www.customerssuck.com/board/), register, and go to the closed forum marked "Morons In Management". Enjoy.

Simply put bad bosses who fire good employees for no good reason pretty quickly find themselves in a position where no good employees will work for them and the performance of their department begins to fall. When that happens Bad Boss is replaced by his Boss.

Unless Bad Boss has friends and connections. Clearly you are inexperienced when it comes to office politics.

[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.

[kitlizzy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess I don't really understand myself why public sector jobs get protections the private sector doesn't - you would think that the jobs and pay would be pretty much the same in either. People in the private sector get fired for no good reason all the time, I'm not sure why the public sector needs oversight against that, unless the idea is to ensure a consistent and competent workforce to be available for these essential services. But then again we've all run into that tenured high school teacher who utterly failed to teach, or the utterly incompetent gov employee no one can fire, so....

[tridus.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine works in the video game industry, which is notorious for poor working conditions. He'll occasionally get told "it's now 12 hour days, 7 days a week for the next two months because our delivery schedule was completely unrealistic."

Just because he goes through it doesn't mean I should welcome the same nonsense.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Government jobs have governments behind them with little/no constraints. See trillion dollar debt. No private sector has that kind of bargaining leeway behind them.

[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.