[Dean's World] Ron Coleman: Public trust -- the labor side

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Ron Coleman:
Public trust -- the labor side
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1168313145.shtml


   Mickey Kaus, reporting on cute municipal union hijinx -- [1]sabotaging
   signal lights as part of a "job action"-- [2]writes:

     There is some logic to paying private sector employees according to
     how much disruption they can cause during a strike (which is
     roughly what U.S.-style collective bargaining does). There's a lot
     less logic to paying government employees according to how much
     disruption they can cause--that disruption is often immense, even
     when strikers don't resort to extralegal means.

   I think Mickey gets it all wrong, except his conclusion. The problem
   is not the scope of the disruption. A strike by private UPS workers
   will do more to upset the economy than a strike by the Clifton Animal
   Control Department. The problem is the principle of the thing: Public
   employees work for the public by virtue of a calculation, made at some
   point in the policy-making chain, that what they do is best done by
   government -- and that the public will (on pain of imprisonment) fund
   their salaries.

   Competition is not an option: Government has declared that the
   services being provided are of Public importance, such that only The
   Public can provide them to The Public.

   Forget the scale of disruption. Forget the bloated benefits and cushy
   pensions. Forget the fact that public employees' employers are
   (virtually) never at risk to go out of business. The flip side of
   having a salary that your employers can go to jail for not paying is
   that you can't strike against them, or otherwise go outside the bounds
   of good labor behavior, ever.

References

   1. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-trafficlights6jan06,1,3113813.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true
   2. http://www.slate.com/id/2157272/