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> What if we paid workers meaningful amounts of equity? How would you provide equity for public school teachers?

by jrowley 11y ago

supster 11y ago
That's a great point. Maybe we should view the issue from two perspectives: 1) unions for government employees and 2) unions for corporate employees. Where maybe the solution for corporate employees is more equity compensation, and for gov't employees a formal union system makes sense. Though some have argued that perhaps the gov't should not be in the business of education, and perhaps encourage a voucher system instead.
- Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago
  In some ways public sector unions are worse than private sector unions. In the private sector, the stakes are higher; you can contribute to the bankruptcy of your company if you are too aggressive. You also can only negotiate with the company itself. Maybe you can get a boycott of products in some cases. With public sector unions, bankruptcy is very hard to achieve. The union also isn't negotiating with the government agency; it's negotiating with politicians as well, who have aims other than efficiency. They want to get elected. If enough of your constituency is in the relevant union, there's going to be pressure to not negotiate as hard. Look at e.g. public transit unions. The DC Metro is falling apart, station managers sleep at work, escalators don't work ludicrously often, repairs are shoddy, and the drivers aren't terribly good at driving their trains (seriously, since they disabled computer control it's started giving me motion sickness; I have never experienced this on other transit systems). Yet the union is asking for a raise.
e12e 11y ago
>> What if we paid workers meaningful amounts of equity? > How would you provide equity for public school teachers? I don't subscribe to the neo-liberal idea of conflating money with value (or equivalently: to measure efficiency in terms of money). But one could theoretically ban salaried employment[1,2]. And structure public services as employee-owned corpration that bid on service contracts. On might create a limited monopoly, by requiring a license to eg: run public education. And the same could be done for police, prisons, fire departments, special forces, security services... Again, I don't think this is a good idea, and we do this to a certain extent already. [1] https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/knights-of-labor-jim-crow-labor-populism-reconstruction/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/knights-of-labor-jim-crow... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

> What if we paid workers meaningful amounts of equity? How would you provide equity for public school teachers?

by jrowley 11y ago

> What if we paid workers meaningful amounts of equity? How would you provide equity for public school teachers?

That's a great point. Maybe we should view the issue from two perspectives: 1) unions for government employees and 2) unions for corporate employees. Where maybe the solution for corporate employees is more equity compensation, and for gov't employees a formal union system makes sense. Though some have argued that perhaps the gov't should not be in the business of education, and perhaps encourage a voucher system instead.

Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago
In some ways public sector unions are worse than private sector unions. In the private sector, the stakes are higher; you can contribute to the bankruptcy of your company if you are too aggressive. You also can only negotiate with the company itself. Maybe you can get a boycott of products in some cases. With public sector unions, bankruptcy is very hard to achieve. The union also isn't negotiating with the government agency; it's negotiating with politicians as well, who have aims other than efficiency. They want to get elected. If enough of your constituency is in the relevant union, there's going to be pressure to not negotiate as hard. Look at e.g. public transit unions. The DC Metro is falling apart, station managers sleep at work, escalators don't work ludicrously often, repairs are shoddy, and the drivers aren't terribly good at driving their trains (seriously, since they disabled computer control it's started giving me motion sickness; I have never experienced this on other transit systems). Yet the union is asking for a raise.

e12e 11y ago

>> What if we paid workers meaningful amounts of equity? > How would you provide equity for public school teachers? I don't subscribe to the neo-liberal idea of conflating money with value (or equivalently: to measure efficiency in terms of money). But one could theoretically ban salaried employment[1,2]. And structure public services as employee-owned corpration that bid on service contracts. On might create a limited monopoly, by requiring a license to eg: run public education. And the same could be done for police, prisons, fire departments, special forces, security services... Again, I don't think this is a good idea, and we do this to a certain extent already. [1] https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/knights-of-labor-jim-crow-labor-populism-reconstruction/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/knights-of-labor-jim-crow... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery