I asked the following question of two of my labor law partners. I thought the question itself would make a good post:
"As you may know I have blog which I use to vent about things. I have a topic I'd like to write on but feel inadequately conversant with the facts.
Why do we have public employee unions in the first place?
It seemed to me that unions arose to counteract owner/ capitalists. The goal of the owners is to maximize profits, even at the expense of the workers. Union wanted the workers to at least benefit from those profits as well.
The government is not in the business of making profits. And as to the demands of the public workers who is on the "owner" side? Unlike the private sector where executives have large shareholdings, money paid to public worker don't personally come from the pubic officials who grant their demands. It doesn't appear that the taxpayer is being very aggressively represented. In fact the public worker are also taxpayers, so there is that quirk as well.
Accordingly the same dynamic doesn't seem exist with respect to contract negotiations in the public sector as in the private sector. I assume that is the reason that public sector unionization is growing and ever more powerful , unlike the private sector. Has there ever been a case where public employees have gotten rid of their union? There appears to be no concept of non-union alternatives for the consumer/taxpayer.
Sorry if I sound uninformed and naive but the thought just hit me the other day, with Greece and all."
I'll follow up with their answers, but what are yours?
Eric
Eric, Your premise is wrong. Public employees need unions for the same reasons as private employees. Having been both a government and private employer myself, I can tell you the dynamics are the same. In the private sector, the bureaucrats (known as management, led by the bureaucrat in chief, a/k/ the CEO), must operate within budgetary constraints and is concerned with preserving resources for uses other than wages: investment in other product lines, hiring more people, capital investments, dividends, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe government bureaucrats (also know as management, by the way) have the same pressures, excluding only dividends. They have limited budgets and if they want to, for example, expand services, initiate new programs, buy new computers, or hire more workers, they must be concerned not to use their limited resources by granting too generous worker benefits.