Scot Lehigh is up to his usual in this column about Rep. Dan Winslow. Scratch the surface of a complex issue. Take at face value the pronouncements of a glib and ambitious politician. That’s great journalism.
Lehigh just loves Dan Winslow’s messages. “Let the managers manage!” “Unions have too much power!” If you want to know what’s really going on here, just look up at the column above Scot’s. It’s Jeff (“Isn’t he just a National Treasure”) Jacoby telling us that collective bargaining has no real place in government at all. Jacoby, like George W. Bush doesn’t do nuance. He knows his limitations so he doesn’t even try. So he adduces in support of his claims a 70-year old quote from Arnold Zander, founder of AFSCME, and a 56-year old quote from George Meany of the AFL-CIO. Besides, Texas, North Carolina and Indiana don’t allow public employees to bargain, and they’re doing just fine! There’s no “fundamental” right to collective bargaining anyway.
But someone once said, criticizing the pro-Soviet Polish government,
By outlawing Solidarity, a free trade organization to which an overwhelming majority of Polish workers and farmers belong, they have made it clear that they never had any intention of restoring one of the most elemental human rights-the right to belong to a free trade union.
That would be Ronald Reagan.
The right has decided to make its move against organized labor. Not only the Koch Brothers, but Karl Rove, and the conservapundits all the way down to Daniel B. Winslow see labor as ripe for the kill. Unionized labor is only 6.9% at private companies, but 36% of public employees, so that’s where the attack has to focus. Labor has huge negatives, many of its own making, but many from the relentless anti-labor messages over decades. So it’s euthanasia time. By now everyone knows that Scott Walker’s alleged budget bill is really about doing away with public unions. People just express it differently depending on their degree of right-wing-ness. That unions are responsible for Wisconsin’s budget mess is at very best case not proven. The budget mess in Texas is much bigger than Wisconsin, and Texas has virtually no public employee unions.
And Winslow’s “Let the managers manage” mantra, besides it’s quaint 19th century echoes, is part of the same right-wing theme. “Let the managers manage” was the rationale behind the repeal of the Glass-Stegall Act in 1999. Turn those managers loose and we’ll all be rich. How’d that work out?
So if you don’t think, contra Lehigh, that this is really about killing off unions I’ve got news for you. Do you know that the Zakim bridge is up for sale? Interested?
Change will come when we start thinking from a worker’s perspective.
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p>In politics and policy, we view employees from a managerial perspective. Since so many of us are not in management, and (I’m betting) many of us know incompetent managers, it’s kind of ironic that we assume the worst of workers and the best of managers.
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p>I see this a lot in education policy. Reform is predicated on the belief that superintendents and principals have superior knowledge of education. Sometimes, that’s the case. Often, it’s not. Because of unions, teachers don’t work hard, don’t do what they’re told, and students fail.
When it comes to education policy, administrators are called on to contribute and teachers get lip-service.
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p>As taxpayers, we also identify with managers. Public workers are to be directed, and rewarded or punished. Their wages are to be kept down so they’ll have incentive to work harder and make more money.
I taught for 15 years in a wide variety of school districts. What I found was that most building principals cared far less about how much learning went on inside your classroom but whether you were a “team player” aka you didn’t challenge the administration.
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p>Educational administrators are far more interested in and responsive to school and town politics then developing teachers. In fact, the teachers who push kids to do the most often get the most grief from administrators.
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p>The union wasn’t perfect, but it did protect us.
administrators go. My last principal lasted 23 years in my school, and he was excellent. Our new principal is still learning, but he was vice principal before that so he is carrying on much of what our previous principal built.
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p>Some union locals suck, being either too cooperative or too uncooperative. Ours is well-led, but not oppressive.
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p>I’ve been lucky.
Labor and management work together for everyone’s benefit. As long as we have an adversarial model, we’ll get adversarial actions.
Working together for MUTUAL, rather than everyone’s, benefit has proven to be the problem.
That’s akin to asking that if I don’t want killing, why defend military spending. Collective bargaining is a way to try to somewhat balance an inherently balanced relationship. The German system legally implements balance.
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p>What we have for public employees is adversarial. That’s why public employees go on strike from time to time, and why they’re locked out or fired en masse from time to time. Those are the ultimate weapons in the adversarial relationship.
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p>What I would prefer to see in public and private unions is that worker representatives sit on equal terms in equal numbers with management on corporate boards and strategic councils. They work together to steer the concern in everyone’s interest. The results speak for themselves: the German worker is superior to the American one in every way except total number of minutes worked.
than the public. I don’t necessarily think that public sector unions are monsters to be attacked, but it must be acknowledged that the manner in which they are effective is not by driving a hard bargain, but by effecting the election of someone who makes hard negotiating unnecessary.
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p>Hence the endless stream of “isolated abuses” in the form of double dipping, early retirement, earn a whole year by retiring on Jan 2 things.
A union in a democracy is effective to the point that it can influence an election, that’s a maxim. On that score, public-sector unions, perhaps because they’re in the public sector, are better attuned to that strategy. It is true that as with any regime, people take advantage to personal benefit. At least the people you describe are generally vilified for that behavior, rather than promoted (which is what happens in the private sector. Any guesses what the BCBS ex-CEO’s next salary will be?)
Much of the defense of public sector unions over the last few weeks is similar to yours: look at those fat cats, we need to act collectively in order to even think about beginning to balance the leverage. As above, the fat cat is a private sector bad guy.
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p>But this is not relevant to a discussion of public sector unions. It is a non sequitor.
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p>I think that there must be a defense for the existence of public sector unions– note for example that single teachers who live alone can now support themselves without resort to welfare, among other things. But this isn’t it.
Private sector unions look to elect candidates that support labor-friendly policies of various kinds.
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p>Public sector unions look to elect candidates that will will maximize the budget for that union’s members, irrespective of their positions on other issues.
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p>I think that this is an important distinction. I don’t think it makes public sector unions evil or worthy of abolition, but it does make one concerned that state and local government could find itself in General Motors land, financially speaking. This would be of no benefit to anyone, as negotiated future benefits are not helpful if the state or locality’s checks bounce.
between private and public sector unions, or between unions and other organziations that are politically involved. Let’s face it, most organizations in our society — whether they are public or private sector unions or corporations and their trade associations or nonprofit hospitals and universities — contribute to political candidates.
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p>I recently heard someone complain about the fact that union workers have no say in the political uses to which their union dues are put. Well, actually they have more say — they can vote in new union leadership — than most of us have about the political uses to which our insurance premiums are put.
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p>Yet, it always seems to be unionism that is singled out as being at fault for trying to influence the political process.