Many [Europeans] have come to regard early retirement, free public healthcare and generous unemployment benefits as fundamental rights. They stopped asking, a long time ago, how these things were paid for. It is this sense of entitlement that makes reform so very difficult.
Gideon Rachman, Financial Times
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a few months ago i read a really good novel by dennis lehane [who, far as i can tell, seems to only write really good novels] called the given day, which dealt with, among other things, the events leading up to the boston police strike of 1919.
and lemme tellya, by the time he was finished making his case--poor bastards had no collective bargaining rights, worked 90 hours a week with no overtime, got no health or death benefits, paid for their own uniforms, had been screwed outta raise after raise and risked life and limb every day for less than fuckin' streetcar operators made--hell, my twenty-first century reactionary, conservative ass was suddenly all like
[and what happened when the dedicated, overworked, starving policemen of boston finally couldn't take it anymore, collectively rose up and walked out on the job? looting and rioting ensued, the striking policemen were blamed, fired and made pariahs, and then their raw, unqualified replacements were suddenly given all the benefits their predecessors had sacrificed everything for--i.e., the perfect cynical mkf ending.
but i digress.]
fast-forward 90 years:
In the past decade, [Los Angeles Unified School District] officials spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven teachers for poor classroom performance — and only four were fired, during legal struggles that wore on, on average, for five years each. Two of the three others were paid large settlements, and one was reinstated. The average cost of each battle is $500,000.
source: LA Weekly, in a recent story about the california teachers union
what the fuck happened between 1919 and now? simple: the pendulum swung too far from one labor extreme to the other, and now it's way past time for a correction.
problem is, our president and current congress don't see it that way, and, even as europe collapses under its own weight, seem determined to take us down their same path to entitlement hell.
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when after nine years of [non-union] employment at my former job i was suddenly laid off a month ago, i was given three months' severance (which i considered generous), the remainder of that month's healthcare coverage, the balance of my 401(k) and a kiss on the cheek goodbye--that's all.
when a scant two weeks later i was suddenly offered a similar [non-union] position for significantly less than i had formerly been making, i woulda been outraged and insulted had i not immediately understood--being non-union and living in recession central [i.e., california] as i do--how damn lucky i was.
i rapidly adjusted to this new reality, accepted the [non-union] job, took the pay cut, and whistle every day on my way to my new work.
tell me, why is it too much to ask of goddam union members--with all the job-security, retirement and healthcare benefits they'll enjoy unto perpetuity courtesy of non-union taxpaying suckers like me--to do the same?
splain me, noblesavage--i'm waiting.
4 comments:
A question has been posed by guttermorality:
tell me, why is it too much to ask of goddam union members--with all the job-security, retirement and healthcare benefits they'll enjoy unto perpetuity courtesy of non-union taxpaying suckers like me--to do the same?
Guttermorality has demanded satisfaction. I take up the challenge:
First, we should understand the basic math of union membership in the United States today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
In 2009, the union membership rate--the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union--was 12.3 percent, essentially unchanged from 12.4 percent a year earlier, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions declined by 771,000 to 15.3 million, largely reflecting the overall drop in employment due to the recession. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million union workers.
A good source for more information is:
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1176&context=key_workplace
Union membership has been declining for decades. Yet, if you looked at this aggregate data, you would miss a really important trend -- the significant growth of union membership in public sector jobs:
Again, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
The union membership rate for public sector workers (37.4 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private industry workers (7.2 percent). Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 43.3 percent. This group includes work-
ers in heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and fire fighters. Private sector industries with high unioni-
zation rates included transportation and utilities (22.2 percent), telecommunications (16.0 percent), and construction (14.5 percent). In 2009, low unionization rates occurred in agriculture and related
industries (1.1 percent) and financial activities (1.8 percent).
You will notice the private industries that have the highest unionization rates tend to be heavily regulated and, therefore, not so fiercely competitive.
So the question you pose is actually a reflection, I think, of the job security that public employees have (unionized or not) versus private sector employees.
While it is true that union employees in the private sector are entitled to a grievance hearing and the appeal of any termination, my own experience has been that these folks are not supported by the union when the union believes there was a good cause to terminate (or the union officials have been bought out and are in bed with management).
The example you provide of LAUSD is a good one. Basically, in order for LAUSD to move to terminate you, you most not only be a bad teacher, you must have done something to piss off some management official enough to be motivated to go through the enormously cumbersome process to move to terminate you. Actually, I have seen a case or two where you just pissed off someone off more than being a bad teacher.
Using the termination process in retaliation for personal reasons is something I see a lot. So, management is a lot to blame for this.
The reason why public sector employees were granted job protection related not to union protection but really because of the idea of creating a "civil service" that would be immune to political cronyism and patronage. This was a Progressive Era reform now about 100 years old.
In the past, a new mayor meant mass firings as everyone, top to bottom was replaced every few years. This caused a great deal of chaos, but it also lead to a great deal of incompetence. So the idea of making civil service jobs based upon exam and merit and also much more difficult to fire was born.
Do you really want the fire department to be patronage positions? Keep in mind that FEMA Director "Heckuva job" Brownie was a patronage selection.
So for almost all civil service jobs that I am aware of, you need to apply, take an exam, and jump through a bunch of hoops. The supervisor or panel that makes the hire is supposed to justify the hire or promotion based upon work based criteria (merit).
The problem has been that the fire department and the police department and a lot of other public sector jobs have now developed their own type of patronage.
So, yes, in some respects, the pendulum has swung too far the other way.
The formal solution is to make it easier to terminate people, but no so easy that it just becomes arbitrary.
But the real solution is to install management that does not use the public sector for its own personal rewards system. I have seen so much of that in my own experience: It is the leadership that is the biggest obstacle to reform. The people at the top reward people loyal to them with promotions and punish people who do not toe the line with disciplinary action and charges before the Personnel Board -- often frivolous charges and usually selective prosecution.
Again, the problem has been the continued attempts by political appointees or management to create a patronage system.
That is the issue as to job security.
As to benefits -- and the particularly generous retirement benefits that many public sector employees receive -- that is a complicated issue.
Generally and oversimplifying, these overly generous retirement packages were created about 30 years ago when the states and local governments were facing a crisis and could not pay their employees much afford pay increases. So they made a bargain with their employees for increased retirement benefits.
That is generally part of the basic bargain now. Public sector employees earn substantially less than comparable private sector employees. There are some exceptions. But an administrator in the public sector makes about 30 to 40 percent less than a comparable worker in the private sector.
So, if you were doing what you did then as a public employee, you probably would have been paid at 40 percent less than you were making. You now would be subjected to furlough Fridays as a state employee.
There have also been layoffs at a lot of local governments nationwide (again, these layoffs are not necessarily used to get rid of waste, fraud, and inefficiency, but to get rid of people that a city manager or a has a personal vendetta against or something like that).
I am aware of a study done by a large public entity in California that found its employees were paid at least 25 percent less than the private sector, but received benefits that were twice as generous.
The generous retirement benefits are most assuredly going to be cut in the next few years in California and nationwide. They are simply too expensive. So then, however, there is going to be a problem recruiting good people for government positions when the salary is not competitive. I would like our government run by the best people we can get -- and as guttermorality knows -- we live in a capitalist economy where you have to pay for quality.
The guttermorality solution -- fire all of their fat lazy asses -- makes short-term sense. It does not necessarily make long-term sense. Just think about the Bush Administration (the worst recent example of patronage incompetence I can think of). Would you really now want every member of the federal government run by Bush loyalists for the 8 years that he was in office and then fired and replaced by Obama loyalists?
noblesavage: thank you for your most thorough and detailed reply.
as to your first point, i would not only agree with it, but offer a simple explanation for the reason that private-sector union membership has been declining at the same time public-sector union membership has increased: it's because unionization automatically drives up the costs of every enterprise it pervades. private-sector enterprises can't survive if they're not profitable (unless they're investment banks, of course); whereas the public sector blissfully operates (for now, anyway) on, as good ol' maggie thatcher so eloquently put it, "other people's money." so yeah, public-sector union growth is easily (and tragically, imho) understandable.
as to your second point--please, are you seriously trying to make the case that it's not infinitely more difficult and expensive to fire a union member than a non-union employee? c'mon, i may have been born at night, but i wasn't born last night.
and as for protection from the vagaries of rotating mayoral administrations, the civil service system existed long before public-sector unionization, and seemed to work just fine. and if you really wanna tell me that public-sector unionization has saved us from incompetency in public service, go spend an afternoon at the DMV or the department of building & safety trying to get even the simplest little thing accomplished and then get back to me.
as for the last issue you raised--that of public-sector salaries being far less than their private-sector equivalents--gimme the statistics to back that up. from what i can tell, the average unionized public-sector worker rakes in about twice what his private-sector equivalent makes, when all the benefits and job security are included in the calculation.
i'll have more to say about that last point in the near future.
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