The public employees that conservatives love

This article was originally submitted as a comment in response to an article thread posted in The Daily Dish last December.  It was not chosen for publication there, so I'm belatedly writing it here instead edited slightly for article format, given the recent prominence that public employee unions have had here at DHT.

With all the discussion on the problems of the nation's educational system, and the amount that factors such as teacher compensation systems, school administrations, teachers' unions, and the culture at large have on our underperfoming schools--I think it's worthwhile to draw a parallel between teachers and another class of educated public sector professionals.  This profession is one which is ubiquitous, typically ran at local levels of government, generally unionized, considered to be vital to a prosperous civilization--and one which is also frequently subject to heated public disputes about its conduct and competence, into which public employee unions are frequently drawn.  It is also a profession that, unlike teachers or transit workers, is generally beloved by the conservative side of the political spectrum.

I speak, of course, of police officers.

The Thin Blue Line

Big-city newspapers are filled with accounts of incidents where a cop has an unpleasant encounter with a member of the citizenry (up to and including deadly force).  In many of these encounters, the pretext for the police's conduct is found to be questionable, frequently resulting in community outrage--and the cop in question is invariably protected, seemingly no matter the circumstances, by the local police union.  This is especially the case in places (such as Portland) where the civilian government overseeing the cops generally does not tolerate police misconduct.  But the same behaviors which many on the political right deride in many public professions, particularly in teaching--workplace rules that make it difficult to fire bad teachers, seniority-based promotion and retention policies, and a workforce allegedly more interested in professional solidarity rather than in public service--are routinely praised when observed in law enforcement. 

Law-and-order politicians and activists are often more than willing to sweep abuses of power aside on any number of grounds: the perp had it coming, officers have a tough job, etc.  Praises of the the "thin blue line" are frequently sung.  Many of the excuses which prompt calls of "cry me a river" when uttered by teachers (deplorable conditions, insufficient support from higher-ups) find a sympathetic ear when invoked by the police.  And to be fair, many liberals who are quick to denounce abusive cops are in many cases far less eager to denounce bad teachers--instead blaming the environment, the parents, a lack of funding, etc. for failings in the classroom.

Geese and ganders

Other similarities exist between the police and the public schools.  Both are professions, jobs requiring college degrees, and lots of professional judgment on the part of practitioners.  Both careers involve extensive dealings with the public, including many members thereof who don't appreciate the service.  Both careers also are challenging to manage--the quality of an individual practitioner cannot generally be measured with simple metrics, and attempts to do so frequently produce undesirable results.  And both professions pattern themselves after similar institutions, namely the armed forces and the academy.

Law enforcement in the US is modeled in many ways on the military.  Command structures and ranks are military in origin, and many departments include paramilitary tactics as part of their training (whether warranted or not).  It's not uncommon to hear officers working bad neighborhoods describing the environment as a "war zone".  On the other hand, the severity of the discipline is far less in civilian law enforcement   (Can you imagine a commanding officer trying to discharge a problem soldier being overruled by an arbitrator?) 

Likewise, public education likes to fashion itself in the robes of academia--the teaching staff of a school is called the "faculty", and concepts such as tenure and academic freedom are lifted wholesale from the university context, despite the fact that college professors are generally not unionized (and thus are not protected by collective bargaining arrangements) and public schoolteachers aren't typically engaged in research programs which might be controversial and subject to political interference, the justification for tenure in higher education in the first place. 

I think that a useful political compromise might be this:  What is sauce for the goose ought to be also sauce for the gander.  What's good for teachers ought to be also good for cops.  If someone suggests that we should try to bust teachers' unions and/or abolish other personnel practices which are (arguably) more appropriate for factory workers rather than skilled professionals; ask them how they feel about doing the same to the local police force.  If someone says that teachers are overpaid, ask what they think of the salaries of cops.

And vice versa.

More on public employee unions

A few weeks back, DHT covered an article by proud leftist blogger Freddie de Boer, which suggested that the "true" political left in the US was largely excluded from the mainstream professional blogosphere.  Freddie proposed that a way of distinguishing true leftists from "neo-liberals" was their position on organized labor issues, and according to him, quite a few bloggers (such as Matt Yglesias) whose petitions were often adversarial to labor fail to qualify.  The article prompted much debate, including a defense from Yglesias.

Now, another prominent blogger--this time the libertarian-leaning Will Wilkinson of The Economist, has stuck a stick in this hornets nest.  The title of Will's opus is swift and to the point:  Government workers don't need unions.  Will drags an old FDR quote out of the attic to bolster his point ("The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service"), and makes essentially the following arguments.

• Private labor/employee relationships are different than public ones, as the former involve two parties fighting over the surplus from some economic activity, whereas public sector workers are bargaining against the public good.
• Many public sector workers don't need collective bargaining to protect their interests, as they often have civil service protections; and are found in such large numbers as to hold significant political power.  (I might add that many public employees hold jobs which cannot be easily outsourced; and that public-sector administrators and their elected-official bosses are generally under more pressure to deliver services than make money).
• Oh, and they have the Democrats under their thumb--making Republicans appear to be the economic champion of the underprivileged (who by definition are neither wealthy, nor holding high-paying government jobs).

I've commented before on the tenuous relationship between organized labor and advocates for robust public services; quite a few transit bloggers I know are quite hostile to the local transit union.  However, Wilkinson's article contains several points which need firm addressing.

Regarding his first (in the list above)--essentially what he is saying is that in public-employee bargaining, we the taxpayer are management.  (A better analogy might be that the public at large are shareholders, and public officials are management).   That certainly changes the motivations of many people involved; it's not unsurprising to find those who don't care about relations between some corporation and its unions (or who even hold a union card in the private sector), but get outraged at media reports of highly-paid public employees who allegedly loaf on the job.  However, it ought not change the moral calculus one bit.  If you believe that jobs ought to pay a "living wage", it should not matter if the employer is a private enterprise or a public agency; nor should the public/private distinction matter if you are a firm believer in the premise that jobs should pay no more or less than what the market will bear.

Who's got the power?

Will is correct when he observes that public employees often enjoy greater bargaining power than their private sector counterparts.  The best evidence of this is their mere existence.  Many private sector unions (and indeed, entire industries) have been thoroughly smashed over the past three decades since Reagan first took office.   A great and somewhat unfortunate irony of labor relations is that in the industries where unions would have the most benefit, where the workers suffer the greatest levels of mistreatment and exploitation, they are mostly likely to be ineffective or missing altogether--as these are the industries where capital and management hold the strongest hands.  Conversely, where labor is "needed" the least--those markets where workers enjoy good wages and working conditions, are the areas where labor is likely to be strongest.   Part of this is due to the presence of the unions--their job, after all, is to win a better deal for workers--but part of this is because, as Will notes, the effectiveness of labor depends on its economic strength, not on any moral concern.  In those industries where work can easily be migrated elsewhere, or where workers are interchangeable, or where production can easily be stopped without damaging the interests of capital, labor does poorly.  Where workers have specialized skills, cannot easily be outsourced, or where work stoppages pose a serious threat to the boss's bottom line, labor fares well.  Strong unions grow stronger, weak unions get busted.

While Will's suggestion that maybe public employees ought to go away would serve to address one side of this inequity--the alleged overcompensation of public employees at taxpayer expense--he doesn't have any suggestions at all for how we might address it the other side of this phenomenon, and lift low-wage workers out of poverty.  Nowhere is the suggestion that coupled with attacks on the public unions, we ought to encourage and protect and foster private-sector unions, to help farmworkers and WalMart greeters and waitresses get off the minimum-wage treadmill.  (Or as an alternative to strong unions, find other ways to help improve their lot).

The privatization card

The bargaining power of public employees is not absolute, however; as anti-union public officials have several weapons in their arsenal, one of the most effective being privatization.   One of the key reasons that many conservatives favor privatization of public services (including arrangements where operations are contracted out to private operators while control remains in the hand of the public), is that  doing so turns public employees into private employees.  Adding a private operator to the mix introduces another hand into the taxpayer wallet, but it is often effective in reducing wages, as private operators are insulated from the political pressures (and civil service regulations) which hamstring public administrators.  This is especially true for those services (including public transit in much of the country) which are viewed as "welfare", and have tenuous political support to begin with.

We see this a lot in the debate on public education.  While there are valid concerns that organized labor (which seeks to promote job security in addition to good pay and working conditions, and is thus frequently opposed to anything that might make it easier to fire teachers) opposes many sort of useful reforms, I suspect that a big part of the push for privatization isn't out of a desire to make education better, but to make it cheaper--and return the windfall to taxpayers.  (There are other factors as well that have little to do with economics; including a desire that many have for taxpayer-subsidized religious instruction).

Privatization has many defenders, including many parts of the media that consider it axiomatic that private agencies, motivated by profit, are inherently more efficient than public ones.  I'll agree that profit-focused agencies are better at making money; but they're not necessarily better at providing service.  There are countless examples of private companies (acting in countless industries--banking, telecommunications, and health insurance immediately come to mind) which seem to excel at nickeling and diming their customers to death.  Unsurprisingly, many of these industries are oligarchies, where the crucible of competition doesn't exist in any meaningful form.

Labor and political activism

Will also seems to consider it untoward that public employees attempt to better their lot via political activism (including the support of labor-friendly politicians), rather than solely seeking concessions at the bargaining table.  The prospect of elected officials owing patronage to unions is frequently denounced as corruption, under the theory that public officials have a fiduciary duty to the public to turn the screws on the government workforce as tightly as they can.  However, many conservatives seem far less bothered by the same sort of arrangements when rich people do it; and that it's perfectly legitimate for the Koch brothers or Richard Mellon Scaife to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the political process to try and elect politicians who will be friendlier to their business empires.  It ought to tell you something that the Citizens United decision is largely praised by conservatives and loathed by liberals, despite the fact that its provisions also apply to labor--both sides know perfectly well who has the bigger bankroll at the poker table.

With regards to the impact on the fortunes of the various political parties, Will's observations may well be true--quite a few of the country's downtrodden seem to identify more with the GOP with the Democratcs--but it's worth asking why that ought to be.  Why should a poor person's livelihood be more threatened by a bus driver or school teacher making $50k a year, than by the multimillionaire Davos-hopping CEO who just got a bonus for sending good private sector jobs overseas?  While cultural and racial politics are likely a big part of it, the observation in the last paragraph (who has the most money to spend on political messaging) probably has something to do with it as well. 

Some final thoughts

As noted above, those of us involved in public-service activism frequently find ourself in adversarial situations with public employee unions.  Many of the government agencies we deal with lack plenary taxing power, and thus a direct conflict exists between the amount of service which can be provided, and the wages and benefits paid to the workers who provide the services.  It's tempting to pile onto the public employee unions and tell them it's their turn to take one for team progressive.  However, one question must be asked:

What would happen were major concessions to be won from public employees?  Would quality of service really improve?  Would class sizes shrink, bus frequencies increase, potholes get filled more quickly, and the folks at the DMV start to smile?

Or would the savings instead be "returned to the taxpayer", often in a form (such as broad-based rate reduction) that distributes the lion's share of the windfall to the wealthy, and the same class sizes and bus headways maintained--only now staffed with teachers and bus drivers who are more likely to come from the bottom half of the barrel? 

Four decades ago, when unions had broad market power and were producing inflationary spirals that threatened the economy, attempts to curb said power might have actually done some public good.  But in today's economic climate, such complaints are tantamount to fretting about mosquitoes while being chased by a hungry bear.  The growing economic disparity between rich and poor is the real problem facing the US today.  Taking shots at public employees will do nothing to narrow this gap, and might well widen it by eliminating a significant sector of what is left of America's middle class.

Labor and the Left

This past Saturday, longtime (albeit retired) lefty blogger Freddie de Boer came out of his self-imposed retirement to lament a paucity of "true" leftists in the professional, "establishment" blogosphere.  Many professional establishment bloggers eagerly took the bait, and some who consider themselves progressives took a bit of umbrage (among them Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum).  Some debate focused on the nature of establishment blogs--to me, they're just another establishment medium, and noting that views outside the Overton Window are not well-represented in establishment media is stating the obvious.  There aren't many guys wearing Harley-Davidson jackets and riding leathers attending black-tie events in Georgetown, either.  And certain viewpoints, such as real honest-to-goodness socialism (as opposed to fake "socialism" of the kind that allegedly ensnares the entire Democratic Party) are simply not permitted to be held by Very Serious People.

Even the tamer progressives who are so permitted, generally have to couch their arguments in the language of equity.  The sort of leftist rants commonplace elsewhere in the West, wherein the rich are held to be dirty rotten scoundrels who deserve to be taxed through the nose and are lucky that they don't get worse, are simply excluded from "serious" political discourse.   On other hand, equivalent arguments on the right--that the poor are lazy unworthies who don't deserve the pittance they do get from the government, are far too commonplace in our political conversation.  And many right-wing ideas that were dismissed as kookery as recently as a few years ago, now get mainstream attention.  (In some cases, the attention is mostly ridicule, but if your a political agitator, it's better to be ridiculed than ignored).

Of course, there are plenty of trade unionists, anti-corporatists, socialists, communists, and other Haters of Baby Jesus And Betrayers Of America™ in the wider blogosphere for your reading pleasure.  But you won't find them drawing paychecks from the likes of The New Republic.

The dastardly neoliberals

What was more interesting, I think, was the debate on the left's relationship to organized labor.  Freddie pounded a stake in the ground, stating that any progressive worthy of the term ought to, a priori, support organized labor in the US.  Many of the aforementioned A-list bloggers frequently take positions critical of labor; and its common on the left to brand those who fail to toe this line as "neoliberals"--a term, like "yankee", is frequently intended to be an insult.  Matt Yglesias, in particular among the blogerati, has been the subject of this line of criticism.  Yglesias defended himself on the charge of insufficient progressivism, noting that many labor unions (particularly in the public sector) frequently block or oppose reforms that would benefit the poor as a class, but which would reduce their own members' pay or benefits.

This is, of course, not a new debate.  Many bloggers on the transit beat, yours truly included, have periodically complained about transit unions, especially ones with compensation packages that are far more generous than one finds for equivalent-skilled positions in the private sector. I wrote over at Portland Transport, on the subject of TriMet's relationships with its union:

This is a particularly nasty fault line in progressive politics in the US--there seems to be a growing rift between many social service advocates and public employee unions. I can think of quite a few well-known transit bloggers and writers, dedicated progressives all of them--who loathe their local transit union. (One of these activists made an interesting observation--the cities with the best transit tend to have the strongest transit unions; whereas the cities which only run low-quality social service transit are more likely to have outsourced their operations, often to non-union operators). And as more and more private-sector jobs are outsourced and more private-sector unions busted, public employee unions are finding themselves more and more isolated--whereas in the past, the passengers on the bus were often union workers as well; a larger share of bus and train passengers are non-union white-collar or service workers.

A more thorough discussion of this occured at Ryan Avent's blog, wherein Ryan echoed many of Matt's criticisms of public employee unions.  Ryan writes:

It’s also interesting to me that the alternative, “true” lefty persuasion is one dedicated to the preservation of labor rights. This is an ideological position that doesn’t come naturally to a lot of young left-leaning people for a number of reasons. One is that they look at the empirical evidence and disagree, to some extent, with the notion that the destruction of labor was a cause, rather than a consequence, of broad structural transformations in the economy. (But that probably strikes Freddie as the kind of bullshit an on-the-payroll neoliberal would say.) Another is that younger individuals have had their formative ideological experiences in an era in which labor strength is concentrated in sectors that are either public or dependent on public largesse, and these unions often place themselves squarely in the path of reforms sought by left-leaning writers. I’m sure it was easier to be sympathetic to labor when it was winning limits on truly heinous business practices rather than fighting against merit-based pay for excellent teachers.

In the comments, I noted the existence of what I will call the trickle-over theory, by analogy with trickle-down:  This theory, frequently cited by public employee unions as to why they ought to receive the pay and benefits which they do, is that high(er) public-sector wages will result in higher wages in the private sector as well.  There are several grounds to question this theory:  many public sector jobs have no private sector equivalent--high pay for bus drivers is not likely to drive up wages for electricians, after all; public sector jobs are far less susceptible to things such as outsourcing; and public sector labor arrangements frequently make it difficult if not impossible for outsiders to get such jobs.  And for many such jobs at municipal levels of government, the relative unprogressive nature of the tax structure often means it's the working poor socked with the bill for all of this.  When it comes to public sector unions, all of us, in a sense, are management.

Ryan continues:

I suppose I see organized labor as a means, not an end. Some traditional leftists believe that a return to widespread unionization will mean a return to the (in some ways) more egalitarian world that went with it. My sense is that neoliberal writers tend not to agree that unions are an effective means in this way. But that doesn’t mean they’ve changed their view of the desired ends.

A commenter, though, makes an interesting and important point:

I think the problem is the absence of a countervailing power, as J.K. Galbraith called it. Unions do other things besides control the labor market; they are political actors that counter the corporate agenda. Neoliberalism may be correct from a policy perspective, but it has no base of action. It leads to a Democratic Party of individuals fighting a GOP composed of churches and powerful corporate entities with no limits on their spending.
So I suppose I’d say that neo-liberals need to construct a new civil society that fits within their ideology.

Ignoring corporations, which can take of their own, the importance of the rise of the religious right in the GOP camp cannot be understated--it gives conservatives a (somewhat) dedicated block of voters who can be easily mobilized to turn out and support right-wing causes.  And how this was pulled off is fascinating--decades of theological writings and pronouncements holding that the corporate agenda is in fact not only compatible with, but required by, Christian doctrine--never mind what Jesus himself had to say on the subject.  Labor unions long served as the organizing focus for Democrats--and still do--but the number of voters they can get to the polls is likely on the wane.  Coming up with social structures which can motivate progressives (and which don't require the presence of charismatic leaders such as Obama on the head of the ticket), is a key problem that the left needs to solve.

Meanwhile, across the pond

While drawing inferences on the politics of other countries and applying them to the US is risky, it's intuitive to look at what's going across the pond.  In the UK, the two progressive constituencies discussed here each have their own political parties:  Labor has Labour (we all know how much Englishmen love u's), and neoliberals have, for better or worse, the Liberal Democrats.  The analogy isn't exact--Labour has moved considerably to the right since its days as a de facto socialist party, and includes some socially conservative elements that tend to vote Republican in the US--but it's close.  And the two parties don't like each other much; after the recent parliamentary elections, in which no party got a majority, the Lib Dems elected to form a coalition with--the Conservatives, who have responded to Britain's economic woes with a broadly-unpopular austerity program which critics charge imposes most of the pain on the poor.  And Nick Clegg's party has suffered tremendously for it in the polls; far more so than have the Tories.

It should be noted that the Overton Window in the UK, like elsewhere in Western Europe, is considerably further to the left.  (One piece of evidence is that most European nativist political parties tend to support pro-labor economic positions, unlike the Randian social Darwinism found within US social conservativism).  So take this all with a grain of salt.

The future of labor

What the future of organized labor will be in the US, is hard to foresee.  Many predict it will continue to wane, undermined by a race to the bottom against a rising global power which, despite its history of communism (and its continuing nominal embrace of such), has morphed into a mercantalist state which keeps its own labor force strictly in check.   Others have predicted that the branch will finally snap, and that a new populist movement of some political stripe will arise and fundamentally alter the economic order.  (The Tea Parties have demonstrated quite a few signs of independence from and frustration with the GOP establishment, and have an anti-elitist streak a mile wide--one which so far has been focused on "cultural elites", a cohort presumed to be liberal).  As the US faces its own public debt crisis, who suffers and how much will likely become a more dominant theme in domestic politics.

In many ways, the relationship between labor and the broader left strikes me as similar to the relationship between a basketball team and a mercurial star player--one who is tough to guard, scores points in droves, and draws crowds, but is a pain in the ass in the locker room and who isn't well liked by many of his teammates (who frequently have their own agendas).  I don't mean this analogy to be insulting at all, but it illustrates well the contradictions and difficulties inherent in the relationship.  And it's a broader problem for the left in a system such as ours--where raising the necessary capital (political and financial) to be a contender frequently requires compromising principles and desires, and dealing with issues (and people) that might otherwise be best avoided.

The good news, is that the most powerful labor leader in the US, AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka, seems to understand the broader issues.  He seems to understands that labor politics must uplift the poor and working classes as a whole, and not just those with union cards.  He seems to understand that for labor to thrive, the fundamental rules of the game must be changed, and not just tweaked.  And he seems to understand that this is a long game.

And to address the dichotomy posed by Freddie:  the differences between "neoliberals" and the "pro-labor" left aren't as important as the differences between the boarder progressive agenda and the plutocracy.  Much of the substance of this debate is about which various factions of the working class are entitled to the bigger share of the crumbs.

Personally I'd prefer working on getting a bigger slice of the pie.

Oh, and Freddie?  Don't stay retired too long.  You're still at the top of the game, and whatever you can contribute, the country needs your voice.

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