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

[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.

Re: Restricted Vote for public employees

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

IIRC the bigger concern was with a state having jurisdiction over the capital. Imagine the state creating zoning laws that bar the creation of edifices necessary to house, say, the Senate or House?

From Wikipedia:

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

James Madison expounded the need for a federal district on January 23, 1788, in his "Federalist No. 43", arguing that the national capital needed to be distinct from the states in order to provide for its own maintenance and safety.[7] An attack on the Congress at Philadelphia by a mob of angry soldiers, known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, had emphasized the need for the government to see to its own security. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_columbia#History)