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.
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.