Will have a listen later, but I'll preemptively say that I never hear a convincing argument from these anti public sector union types that addresses the main reason public sector unions were made central in the U.S.: dismantling the spoils system.
We had to go through a US presidential assassination (Garfield) to learn this lesson. Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall held NYC in its corrupt hands because of this.
When public service jobs are not defended by autonomous unions, they effectively become an army of vassals beholden to the incumbent political office holder for their job. Want that promotion? You'd better donate. Don't want to lose your contract renewal for next year? You'd better phone bank the minimum hours and sign the ledger for it.
Yes, there are a ton of imperfections even in carrying out this function independently. Merit does not always get rewarded. But at least the rank and file are able to make a career out of civil service and improve in their craft without getting swept out simply because 5000 favors were promised by someone else who got into power.
I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement either, but most critics want to wholesale do away with protections, without considering the major reasons we got to this situation, nor offer convincing stop gaps that will prevent us from regressing back to a spoils system.
The answer isn't a whole replacement with vendor contracting. It may work for single deliverables like a bridge gettting built, and be great for external compliance and audit, but it certainly isn't working for prisons, homeless shelters, environment/water management, and in education the results have been at best mixed. The major health care companies let us know loudly and clearly in 2009 as Obamacare was being debated that they did not want to be in a public vendor position either. It certainly isn't saving the taxpayer money, even with competitive bidding.
Thank you for spelling your first name correctly. Too many of us mis-spell. Your comment is an important part of the discussion. I am the fence with regard to organized labor. My Local 21 rubber-stamped any DEI position and encouraged membership to join in on DEI activity; while allowing (a): DEI to duct-tape employees mouths at home and (b) DEI to fire loud-mouths like witch-Hepworth based on fake premise.
While my position and prestige were far below that of Jordan Peterson or Amy Wax; each had components of disciplinary action identical to mine. Witch-Hepworth says “Abolish DEI”.
Without some kind of organizing to represent their collective interest as employees, who could keep their job across administrations free from reprisal for not acting as their employer's henchmen? How else would their members (and the general public, for whom they actually work, not their politician bosses) get any guarantee that competent, accomplished workers doing the public good wouldn't be replaced by less qualified party loyalists?
I'm not saying there is no possible alternative, it's just that no one's come up with a convincing one.
In reality, unions are unrelated/unnecessary to the function you're describing- to pick a minor example, the civil servants who work for the legislative and executive branches of the State of Texas are not unionized, but they cannot be fired by the governor, members of the legislature, or other political appointees. That's plain statutory language and construction, not the result of unions.
We need to remove one of the two; public sector unions or civil service protections. I vote to remove the former. It’s bad to have elected officials beholden to government employees.
Will have a listen later, but I'll preemptively say that I never hear a convincing argument from these anti public sector union types that addresses the main reason public sector unions were made central in the U.S.: dismantling the spoils system.
We had to go through a US presidential assassination (Garfield) to learn this lesson. Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall held NYC in its corrupt hands because of this.
When public service jobs are not defended by autonomous unions, they effectively become an army of vassals beholden to the incumbent political office holder for their job. Want that promotion? You'd better donate. Don't want to lose your contract renewal for next year? You'd better phone bank the minimum hours and sign the ledger for it.
Yes, there are a ton of imperfections even in carrying out this function independently. Merit does not always get rewarded. But at least the rank and file are able to make a career out of civil service and improve in their craft without getting swept out simply because 5000 favors were promised by someone else who got into power.
I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement either, but most critics want to wholesale do away with protections, without considering the major reasons we got to this situation, nor offer convincing stop gaps that will prevent us from regressing back to a spoils system.
The answer isn't a whole replacement with vendor contracting. It may work for single deliverables like a bridge gettting built, and be great for external compliance and audit, but it certainly isn't working for prisons, homeless shelters, environment/water management, and in education the results have been at best mixed. The major health care companies let us know loudly and clearly in 2009 as Obamacare was being debated that they did not want to be in a public vendor position either. It certainly isn't saving the taxpayer money, even with competitive bidding.
Thank you for spelling your first name correctly. Too many of us mis-spell. Your comment is an important part of the discussion. I am the fence with regard to organized labor. My Local 21 rubber-stamped any DEI position and encouraged membership to join in on DEI activity; while allowing (a): DEI to duct-tape employees mouths at home and (b) DEI to fire loud-mouths like witch-Hepworth based on fake premise.
While my position and prestige were far below that of Jordan Peterson or Amy Wax; each had components of disciplinary action identical to mine. Witch-Hepworth says “Abolish DEI”.
But the unions had nothing to do with dismantling the spoils system .. where did you get that idea?
Without some kind of organizing to represent their collective interest as employees, who could keep their job across administrations free from reprisal for not acting as their employer's henchmen? How else would their members (and the general public, for whom they actually work, not their politician bosses) get any guarantee that competent, accomplished workers doing the public good wouldn't be replaced by less qualified party loyalists?
I'm not saying there is no possible alternative, it's just that no one's come up with a convincing one.
In reality, unions are unrelated/unnecessary to the function you're describing- to pick a minor example, the civil servants who work for the legislative and executive branches of the State of Texas are not unionized, but they cannot be fired by the governor, members of the legislature, or other political appointees. That's plain statutory language and construction, not the result of unions.
We need to remove one of the two; public sector unions or civil service protections. I vote to remove the former. It’s bad to have elected officials beholden to government employees.