Tip O’Neill’s famous line about “all politics are local” came to mind as I was pondering the situation in Wisconsin where the Governor is trying to strip public unions of their collective bargaining rights.
As a liberal Democrat and former Government employee, the unions should have me in their pockets, out picketing in the streets and firing off letters to Congress. But, for the last couple of weeks, I have been conflicted, based in large part on my unpleasant experience at the FAA dealing with agency’s largest and most powerful union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).
In the words of 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes in a totally different context, that experience was “short, nasty, and brutish,” but unfortunately in my case not “short.” That aside, it’s time for me to look at the union position from a larger perspective. And, through that lens, what the Governor is trying to do in Wisconsin comes into sharp relief as a cheap political ploy masquerading as a deficit reduction measure. It is thinnest of fig leafs because the public unions had already agreed to the Governor’s cuts.
But, with the nation in the throes of a slow economic recovery and hundreds of thousands in the private sector still out of work, it’s a convenient time for the Republicans to paint public unions as the bogeyman. It plays well throughout the country, particularly in the heartland and in the South. Everyone needs a scapegoat. The Republican Governor of Indiana has already gotten rid of collective bargaining rights for public employees in his State and the Republican Governor of Ohio aims to do the same.
Once, public unions hardly came up as a blip on the national labor screen but as private sector unions have declined precipitously over the last five decades, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that now “more union members are government workers, not private sector employees,” according to a recent New Yorker article. That’s what helped put public unions in the Republican crosshairs. If the power of the public unions can be reduced, their role as a major donor to Democratic causes can be sharply curtailed as well.
We can’t let that happen because with the income disparity between the rich and the poor increasingly widening in this country and the median income of the middle class remaining essentially stagnant, we need unions to help redress the balance. But, both unions in the private and public sectors need to do some of the heavy lifting in terms of building broad political support, mainly by showing they care about the economy as a whole and the financial well-being of the agencies and organizations they work for, and not just about increasing the salaries and benefits of their own union workers, the rest of the country be damned.
If the U.S. is to continue to lead the world’s economy, we need the unions to help us maintain our leadership role but they must realize that for us to get there we can’t keep doing more of the same and expecting a different result.
Gerald E. Lavey
Hi Jerry,
ReplyDeleteYou make interesting points. How do we appeal to a general sense of shared sacrifice for the greater good? Has our country always been this polarized?
Thanks for posting.
Kevin
P.S. Love your new blog design.
Jerry--
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your efforts to look at this important public policy debate on a balanced basis, but I urge you to refresh your (our memories) of PATCO. There the Secretary and the Administrator engaged Bob Poli and his buddies in a sincere, arduous, lengthy negotiations. As I recall the bidding, those representatives of management put on the table a proposed increase of such historic proportions that they admitted that special legislation would be needed to deliver.
PATCO rejected that historically generous offer in short shrift with the notation that the dollars were inadequate. Bob Poli called an illegal strike (several of his key players were convicted of the relevant felony). WHY-- because unlike the private sector, he knew (actually "bet")that he could take his "case" to the Congress. The process for public employees, according to the Bible of Poli, made the bargaining process irrelevant.
History showed that Bob was a bad bettor and the Reagan Administration more able to manage the ATC than the PATCO cronies anticipated.
This tale was recently repeated. Different actors, same script. NATCA engaged in what must be called scorched earth tactics—casting egregious safety aspersions, attacking on a vituperative personal basis the Administrator and her staff and placing media spots designed to terrify the average flyer. They played their ugly string out again, basically again dismissed the Administration’s office and again (this time with statutory authority) went to the Congress to be their real negotiating party. Once again, the union bet lost and the contract was affirmed by Congress.
Game over—not hardly. NATCA has tried to hold up the FAA Reauthorization bill in an effort to reverse their loss.
What’s the point of these long recitations—THAT PUBLIC UNIONS DO NOT FUNCTION LIKE PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS. Yes, the idea of government employees being represented by professional union representatives sounds nice. But in practice (repeatedly, i.e. more than the cited examples), the statute that allows a union, basically destroys the relationship between the public civil servant and her/his manager. The lesson of “we do not have to honor the negotiating process” translates to “if we do not agree with a manager’s action, let’s grieve it.”
As you well remember the federal government (thank you OPM then) can devise processes with timelines approximating infinity. Public unions contribute to stagnation of important work. Your old office and mine now both have titular managers and shop bosses. The grinding of the FAA’s work makes a grist mill on our own Rock Creek appear to be working at warp speed.
Sorry, Jerry, while we worked together well back in the 80’s, we have very differing views on this issue.