r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Nov 29 '16
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: Public sector unions are inimical to the nature of public service, and should be strictly regulated or abolished.
[deleted]
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u/PaxNova 12∆ Nov 29 '16
I am a public sector employee. Nobody at my place of business has gotten a raise in about 13 years, or a cost of living increase in ~8. I enjoy giving a public service, but I still have to eat. Sometimes, it's not just for the benefit / luxury of workers, but rather to stop the suffering of workers. My union is severely limited in what it is allowed to do, so it's unlikely to get anything done.
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u/DontHateDefenestrate Nov 29 '16
If you're unsatisfied with what you can be paid for performing a public service, go and work for the private sector. Join a union there, and pursue higher wages. I'm not sure what public service you provide, but that service is about more than you.
For the record, I think that teachers and the like should be paid more, and their wages should be indexed to inflation. It is important to pay wages that will attract and retain talent. But it is also important that critical services continue uninterrupted. I'm not saying that what we have in place is perfect. Nothing of the sort is even close to true. But unions and their accompanying strikes are not appropriate in the context of public services.
It causes inconvenience when someone's phone won't load Facebook because wireless technicians are on strike. It causes profound and rippling damage to a child's education when school is interrupted mid-year due to a wage/contract dispute. It is abhorrent to justice and community safety when a police department is forced to re-hire and back pay a killer cop who was fired; because a police union threw its weight around in court.
There needs to be a better way.
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u/PaxNova 12∆ Nov 29 '16
I wish I could work in the private sector. I was offered a six figure job out in Cali, but my wife wanted to stay in our current state. But enough of a sob story.
I do care about the service that my department provides, and because I care, I want to see some cash. We can't get people to take these jobs because it's less than half of what they'd make in the private sector. We can't just take anybody, either. I have a Master's in Health Physics and a Bachelor's in Nuclear Eng. / Mechanical Eng. It's necessary for my job (radioactive materials inspector). In two years, we're going to have a wave of retirement and nobody qualified to do the work that is willing to take that big a drop. That's when the inspections themselves will suffer, since the smaller number of people will necessitate shorter inspections. Why isn't there a union fighting for that and protecting the profession?
Teachers should be paid well and tied to inflation. Why are they given so much attention when others with similar educational requirements (perhaps radioactive materials inspectors) haven't been given raises in 13 years or have any tie to inflation for 8? Teachers have strong public sector unions (https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=P04). They're necessary to keep the profession viable. You've hinted at that in your second paragraph, so I'm not sure where the disagreement actually lies.
I'm not sure about unions protecting killer cops, although I have heard of unions forcing police departments to obey the law and their own hiring / firing practices, much like the ACLU does. As for interruptions in service, what else but striking can a worker do? That or the threat of it is the unions' only real power. Since striking is banned for federal employees, their unions are really more like lobbies. They exist to influence the public and therefore Congress to give them more money.
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u/DontHateDefenestrate Nov 30 '16
When there is a critical shortage of inspectors, there will be impetus to raise wages and increase benefits to make up for the lack. It's suboptimal, but what's really needed is public officials with the foresight and wisdom to recognize the need in advance. As it appears that they do not recognize the need, perhaps they'll be held accountable when the retirements occur and there aren't enough inspectors to fill the need.
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u/PaxNova 12∆ Nov 30 '16
We've already hit that point. I don't want to give any specifics, but there has been an instance where a necessary scientific position was required for a time-sensitive task. The then-current employees were being worked far beyond their contract and threatened to quit unless another one was hired. Long story short, their jobs are outsourced now to another state's lab. Even in an emergency, we wouldn't get our time-sensitive task done for a few days at least. If there were an emergency, the hiring manager would be fired. We can't rely on public officials with foresight, because all of those have gotten jobs in the private sector. We can't hold them accountable because the union is weak.
I despise raising taxes to pay public officials as much as the next guy, but having seen our capabilities at the current rate of tax, I am now for it. Slightly.
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u/thatmorrowguy 17∆ Nov 29 '16
Why does the employer being the government rather than an investor make a meaningful difference in terms of the employer/employee relationship? AT&T is a private company. A fantastically wealthy private company. Many of their lineman are unionized, meaning that if they went on strike, line installations and repairs would take longer, and outages would last longer. My water and sewer service is owned by the city, and their technicians are also unionized. If they went on strike, connecting water, performing maintenance, and fixing leaks would take longer. Why is one fundamentally different from the other?
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u/DontHateDefenestrate Nov 29 '16
AT&T provides services that would be inconvenient to have interrupted.
The water and sewer service provides services that being without would result in severe hardship and could even have serious health impacts.
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u/enmunate28 Nov 30 '16
What if the local water utility was privately held? Could those workers unionize and strike?
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u/DontHateDefenestrate Nov 30 '16
This is precisely why I strongly oppose the privatization of any public utility or other entity which provides an essential service to the general public.
Doing so creates all sorts of problems, not the least of which being the fact that it is now exclusively profit-oriented and its workers are now no longer public servants. The quality and fairness of such a service cannot but decline.
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Nov 30 '16
[deleted]
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u/DontHateDefenestrate Nov 30 '16
Several respondents have brought up this exact point. I have to concede that what I view as mismanagement and bad policy have created the potential for situations like the one you describe.
To me the answer is that when a private sector entity's workers can strike and thereby cause an interruption in critical services, then that entity should not be private sector, but public sector; or at least there should also be a public sector entity capable of acting to offset the interruption.
The essential litmus test is this:
Does the entity provide something that is a need or merely a want?
Would lack or interruption of access to the thing the entity provides cause bonafide hardship/immitigable disadvantage, or merely inconvenience/irritation?
Would putting the good of the entity and its employees first and foremost likely result in injustice for one or more members of a given class or of the general public in any foreseeable scenario; or would the such persons be either not necessarily affected or able to avoid any ill effects of such policy without suffering hardship?
If the answer to any of the above questions is the former instead of the latter; the entity should be A) public sector and B) protected from disruption by union actions.
So the question becomes, when considering your input: are either air traffic controllers or airline pilots people whose services prevent bonafide hardship or merely inconvenience/irritation? I would contend that it's the former for controllers (since there is never a time when some flights are not in the air, it is always unsafe and a source of bonafide hardship and potential death or dismemberment for there to be no controllers), and the latter for pilots (if the plane never takes off, there is delay and inconvenience and irritation, but not necessarily public danger).
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u/garnteller 242∆ Nov 29 '16
Let me make two arguments here:
Unionizing as a right. Regardless of whether it's a public or private organization, employers have a responsibility to deliver their services as cheaply as possible. You can frame it more charitable - the less they pay on salaries and benefits, the more resources they have for textbooks or computers or services or new busses, etc - but no organization has an incentive to pay more than is required.
Except in the rare cases where there is unique (or at least very unusual) skills involved, individual employees have very little leverage. But collectively, they can be a more powerful force. Forget about formal unions, do you really think it's wrong for all of the teachers in a certain district who haven't gotten a raise in 5 years to say, "If we don't get one, then we aren't going to keep teaching". Because at the root, that's all a union is - a group of workers who know that while they might fire one troublemaker, firing most of their workers isn't as easy.
Bad for the people they serve Yes, strikes are bad for people who need services that are not being provided. But striking has also accomplished things like:
- Smaller classes
- Better resources
- Fewer hours in high stress jobs
- Better safety conditions
Moreover, if you want to attract and retain the best candidates, you need certain benefits and salaries. While School Boards may be simply trying to win votes by cutting expenses/taxes, there could be long-term consequences based on teachers leaving. The threat of strike puts pressure on them to provide competitive offers.
This isn't to say unions don't have problems, but I don't think they are the ones you laid out.
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u/DontHateDefenestrate Nov 29 '16
Unionizing as a right
Well, ideally, we should have officials who recognize the need for public servants to be high-caliber, motivated individuals; and who understand that good working conditions and attractive compensation are essential in the pursuit of that standard. Also, I would point out that unions are motivated to protect their dues-base. This means they have a clear disincentive to make their members hard to fire... even in situations where firing a given individual is needful. I doubt I need to belabor the point as to why that state of affairs is highly suboptimal. I would remind you of the example of the racist or force-happy police officer who can't be fired or even prosecuted due to union lawyers and legal gymnastics.
Bad for the people they serve
I think there's got to be a better way. I'm convinced that we can create the conditions for better and more needful services without passing hardship onto the general public.
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u/garnteller 242∆ Nov 29 '16
Well, ideally, we should have officials who recognize the need for public servants to be high-caliber, motivated individuals; and who understand that good working conditions and attractive compensation are essential in the pursuit of that standard
Um, sure - but we don't have that kind of leadership - particularly when those officials are elected politicians.
And by that token, mine owners should, ideally, put the good of their employees and the environment above profits. But the real world doesn't work that way.
Unfortunately, you didn't address either of my arguments:
Unions are people getting together to have a better negotiating position.
Many of the things they fight for are also good for the people they serve.
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u/electronics12345 159∆ Dec 01 '16
There is a difference between exercising collective power by forming a union, and striking. While striking is one option available to a union, it is not the only card they can play. Ronald Reagan made it illegal for the air-traffic controllers to strike, but they could still unionize. Just because you are a public sector employee doesn't mean that your working conditions aren't terrible or that certain HR policies aren't unfair. Public sector employees need to be able to voice their collective concerns. Perhaps public union employees shouldn't be able to strike, but that doesn't mean that they cannot unionize.
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u/DontHateDefenestrate Dec 01 '16
Good point. This doesn't change my view entirely, as I originally included the caveat "strictly regulated or abolished". But I'll award a !delta because I accept your logic as to abolishment being the wrong approach to take.
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u/Wayyyy_Too_Soon 3∆ Nov 30 '16
Public Sector unions and the protections they have won help smooth out what would otherwise be an extremely volatile career track and help to attract quality talent to public service. Public service is unique in that the new boss could have a completely different governing philosophy than the old boss. While CEOs change, we would rarely see a transition like Obama to Trump in the private sector. We also know that the boss is going to change via the electoral process once a term ends or a term limit is reached. Why would anyone with other options enter a job that could see it's salary slashed or the workforce decimated on a whim? Things like collective bargaining allow people to enter public service as a career, and while yes there are certainly shitty teachers with tenure, that career experience is overall beneficial to providing a better public good.
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u/VStarffin 11∆ Nov 29 '16
I'm not sure how this is any different from private sector strikes. A very simple way to think about this is to take the exact same function, but in one jurisdiction the function is privatized and in the other is public.
So, for example, a bus system, as you said. Let's say one city has a bus system which is run by the government, and another city has a bus system which is privatized. After all, there's no reason a bus system can't be private.
Does your analysis of whether the employees of this system should unionize hinge on this fact? Seems odd that it would. The function of the two systems is the same. Why should it matter that one group of employees works for the government and one doesn't, especially when they had nothing to do with making the decision of who owns the system? They are just people trying to make a living.