[Speed Gibson,
Saturday September 8, 2007 at 9:10pm]
Upon Further Review
It's time to revisit an idea, a policy change really, that public employees should have the right to strike. It obviously tugs on our egalitarian heartstrings. It almost seems noble to end an apparently outdated disparity between the public and private sectors. But much of what the public employees have done with that privilege the past 40 years is anything but noble.
The latest example was that of some professional protesters that disrupted a University of Minnesota Board of Regents meeting, claiming to support a strike of ASCFME support personnel against the U of M. Police were called, and the usual journalists obligingly published the usual stories of police brutality against the usual suspects.
The 800 pound gorilla is Education Minnesota, the number one reason why costs continue to rise well above inflation and results continue to fall. We've seen a few cases where K-12 teachers have walked out on their students. Once it's over, the teachers argue that the outage did no long term harm to their students' education yet claim their services are indispensable to their future.
Then there is MAPE, an amalgam of completely unrelated professions, much more so than even the Teamsters. Such an entity shouldn't really exist in the perfect unionized world. But they went on strike recently, impairing several agencies, including some law enforcement.
When Ford workers go on strike, there are alternatives, i.e., competitors. When your local elementary school goes dark and like most, you cannot afford private schooling, you're stuck. If the crime lab gets backlogged to the point where the opportunity to apprehend or convict is lost, we all lose. This creates a disproportionate incentive to settle, which helps explain why only the public sector unions are growing.
The most fundamental problem in the above is that too many public sector jobs shouldn't be public sector jobs. Take your local public library. The entire operation could be outsourced to the private sector. The winning contractor's staff could unionize and strike, and that's the American way. But both the union and the contractor would weaken their position at the next contract renewal.
K-12 education could also completely be returned to the private sector via vouchers. Just because the government pays for it doesn't mean they have to run it. Given their record, they clearly shouldn't continue to run it.
MAPE's members don't provide any service not readily available in the private sector. So why are these people public employees?
There are jobs that must be public sector, most of the police force, for example. And with such privilege must come the requirement not to strike, offset by other benefits like civil service protections and early retirement.
But as for the rest: you strike, you're gone.
The latest example was that of some professional protesters that disrupted a University of Minnesota Board of Regents meeting, claiming to support a strike of ASCFME support personnel against the U of M. Police were called, and the usual journalists obligingly published the usual stories of police brutality against the usual suspects.
The 800 pound gorilla is Education Minnesota, the number one reason why costs continue to rise well above inflation and results continue to fall. We've seen a few cases where K-12 teachers have walked out on their students. Once it's over, the teachers argue that the outage did no long term harm to their students' education yet claim their services are indispensable to their future.
Then there is MAPE, an amalgam of completely unrelated professions, much more so than even the Teamsters. Such an entity shouldn't really exist in the perfect unionized world. But they went on strike recently, impairing several agencies, including some law enforcement.
When Ford workers go on strike, there are alternatives, i.e., competitors. When your local elementary school goes dark and like most, you cannot afford private schooling, you're stuck. If the crime lab gets backlogged to the point where the opportunity to apprehend or convict is lost, we all lose. This creates a disproportionate incentive to settle, which helps explain why only the public sector unions are growing.
The most fundamental problem in the above is that too many public sector jobs shouldn't be public sector jobs. Take your local public library. The entire operation could be outsourced to the private sector. The winning contractor's staff could unionize and strike, and that's the American way. But both the union and the contractor would weaken their position at the next contract renewal.
K-12 education could also completely be returned to the private sector via vouchers. Just because the government pays for it doesn't mean they have to run it. Given their record, they clearly shouldn't continue to run it.
MAPE's members don't provide any service not readily available in the private sector. So why are these people public employees?
There are jobs that must be public sector, most of the police force, for example. And with such privilege must come the requirement not to strike, offset by other benefits like civil service protections and early retirement.
But as for the rest: you strike, you're gone.