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Speaking as a taxpayer, it does not seem to me at all clear why collective bargaining agreements between public servants and city governments should be able to

by malchow 11y ago

Speaking as a taxpayer, it does not seem to me at all clear why collective bargaining agreements between public servants and city governments should be able to be private documents at all. We pay the bills, after all.

eplanit 11y ago
I agree. Collective bargaining for public workers is overall absurd, IMHO. It injects a layer (the union) between the voters/citizens and the public employees. We don't get to elect/control the union or see their dealings? BS!
- sbarre 11y ago
  Ehh I think there is definitely a value in allowing a large group of employees to collectively negotiate as one entity with their employer (if only to ensure parity of resources & skills at the negotiating table) but the results should definitely be public (for public service employees).
  - pc86 11y ago
    The most commonly cited issue with this line of reasoning is that the root reason for private sector unions (massive power disparity between employers and employees) simply don't exist in the public sphere. Public sector employees often vote for or against their current bosses directly.
    - hackuser 11y ago
      > Public sector employees often vote for or against their current bosses directly. That's a very weak bargaining position: Give us what we want or our members, a small minority of the electorate, won't vote for you in two years. Why should they be weaker than other unions?
      - snomad 11y ago
        It isn't just the vote of the membership. It is the dollars of the organization. In California, the California Teachers Union and SEIU are regularly 2 of the top 3 campaign spenders.
        wfo 11y ago
        So you're saying now that they've banded together as a union, they have bargaining power collectively whereas without it they would have none?
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Are you really saying that there is no power imbalance between the government and the people it employs? The power imbalance is, if anything, much worse here.
- CPLX 11y ago
  So labor should just take whatever management and politicians feel like giving them like obedient little servants? How has that worked out in the past? Do we feel that the civil service is sufficiently isolated from rapidly changing political pressures to ensure the rights of workers and to avoid the inherent issues involved in political control of a large group of government workers?
  - jallmann 11y ago
    You have a point, but civil labor usually has an advantage their private-sector counterparts don't: they elect their bosses. Public unions multiply that power. Whether that's a net benefit for society at large, I'm not going to discuss here.
    - hackuser 11y ago
      > civil labor usually has an advantage their private-sector counterparts don't: they elect their bosses. I don't understand this: All unions elect their own leaders, as far as I know. Public sector unions do not elect the heads of the departments where they work, if that's what you mean; the FOP doesn't choose the police chief. If you mean that union members also have votes in general elections, along with the rest of the public, that's true but their influence is limited (there are many other voters), the 'bosses' are a few steps over their heads (the mayor is elected, not the police chief), and finally, that's the point of democracy: Everyone should have influence, from union members to managers to even Repulicans and Democrats.
    - ethbro 11y ago
      I think it might be more accurate to say they elect their bosses' bosses' ... bosses' boss. Unless I've been missing the police captain races on my local ballot?
      - Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago
        In many American jurisdictions sheriffs, prosecutors, mayors, town councils, and even judges are elected. In that case essentially all of the leadership with which a police union might be negotiating is elected. So yes, a police officer's direct boss wouldn't be elected, but in terms of negotiation both a police captain and the rank and file would be aligned in wanting higher pay, making it harder to be fired, etc. In small jurisdictions there would be few layers between a sheriff's deputy and the actual elected sheriff. Also, some of the leadership has a conflict of interest. The prosecutor, one of the ultimate police bosses, cannot work against the police interests without also jeopardizing his own career as the police can stop working with him and get him voted out. This is one of the many reasons why prosecutors tend to treat police brutality cases very differently than if the suspect were an ordinary citizen. Likewise a sheriff might face similar issues since he is elected but his staff is not. Unlike a private sector union, a public sector union can essentially never bankrupt the government, so there is no natural check against their power. Bankrupt your company with absurd work rules? You'll be on the street eventually.
- malchow 11y ago
  There is a pretty tight formal argument that, whether one is for or against unions, public unions are clearly bad. Here is the latest thing I have read on this: http://www.amazon.com/Government-against-Itself-Public-Consequences/dp/0199990743 http://www.amazon.com/Government-against-Itself-Public-Conse... EDIT: Comment below is hysterical and political. This book is a good read. Chuck Reed, former mayor of San Jose, says this about it: "Daniel DiSalvo has laid bare the harsh political realities facing mayors across the country who want to improve the quality of life in their cities. In the annual battles over cutting services, raising taxes or controlling costs to balance the budget, public employee unions usually have the upper hand. In many jurisdictions, costs are skyrocketing, taxes are up and services are deteriorating, yet fiscal reform seems impossible. This book explains how and why the narrow interests of unions in improving pay and benefits frequently overwhelm the broader interests of the people in improving services."
  - CPLX 11y ago
    > There is a pretty tight formal argument that, whether one is for or against unions, public unions are clearly bad. Here is the latest thing I have read on this: http://www.amazon.com/Government-against-Itself-Public-Conse.. http://www.amazon.com/Government-against-Itself-Public-Conse.... Destroying public sector unions is one of the major bullet points on the right wing agenda. Posting a book funded by the Manhattan Institute (i.e. Richard Mellon Scaife, Bill Kristol, etc) should have exactly zero power to convince anyone not interested in being a part of that agenda. EDIT: Wait it gets better, the comment I am responding to was actually posted by someone who has themselves been supported by the Manhattan Institute: http://malchow.com/about/ http://malchow.com/about/ I guess that's how this all works isn't it. EDIT 2: The above commented was edited to read "EDIT: Comment below is hysterical and political. This book is a good read. Chuck Reed, former mayor of San Jose, says this about it..." And 30 second Google search reveals: "San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, in his quest to put a state pension reform measure on next year’s ballot, appears to be buddying up with the Manhattan Institute and possibly its chairman Paul Singer." http://www.sanjoseinside.com/2013/10/24/10_24_13_mayor_reed_vulture_fund_state_pension_reform/ http://www.sanjoseinside.com/2013/10/24/10_24_13_mayor_reed_... I bow to the above poster for illuminating better than I possibly could how the wealthy benefactors of the right wing movement operate on a day to day basis to influence public opinion against labor, right down to comments on HN.
- tosseraccount 11y ago
  People should be allowed to associate with any clubs, partnerships, unions, corporations or organizations that they want to and the other party is agreeable. If you don't want to join, then don't join. If you don't want to do business with a company or a union, then don't do business with them. There is no need for the government to massively interfere unless there is a real physical danger to citizens.
  - TallGuyShort 11y ago
    But if this is collective bargaining involving tax money and people who enforce laws with weapons then this is potentially affecting people who can't choose whether or not they like what's happening. I'm not saying public employees should have no privacy - but this is certainly not a situation where everyone can just do what they want and be left alone. Collective bargaining with the government should be transparent. That doesn't necessarily justify leaking what might contain people's personal information without their consent, but just a point that needs remain in the discussion. Personally, I'm not a fan of the Fraternal Order of Police. We used to support them financially but they were extremely rude and harassed us when we had to step down our donations a bit. There were many people who called us who certainly did not have service to the public as their priority. I don't know much of the context of the dump nor have I viewed it myself, but I'm inclined to be suspicious of them.
  - qrendel 11y ago
    In some cases you're required to pay union dues regardless of whether you join or not. This is apparently the case for teacher's unions in 22 states + DC.[1] So "don't do business with them" isn't even always an option. [1] http://www.teachersunionexposed.com/teachers.php http://www.teachersunionexposed.com/teachers.php
    - tosseraccount 11y ago
      Don't want a closed shop? Don't sign a contract that closes the shop. Lots of businesses sign sole source contracts.
    - dalke 11y ago
- redthrowaway 11y ago
  The public sector is one of the few places that needs a union. There is no competition, no free market to determine wages and benefits, and often no private sector equivalent of the positions involved. There is one monolithic, powerful entity that doesn't move quickly or respond well to changing labour market conditions, and many small, powerless employees whose skills are not always transferable to the private sector. Without unions, it's a setup that would almost guarantee abuse. Unions are certainly not ideal, but they are necessary for that kind of industry.
  - jerf 11y ago
    The problem with public unions is that they are not negotiating with an entity that has the motivation to save every penny, which does in fact remove one of the major needs to unionize. Governments care less about giving away money, especially if they're building a voter base in the process. And history rather strongly suggests that governments downright love promising the world tomorrow if you'll just smile for the cameras today. It ends up being both the unions and the government against the tax payer too easily.
    - monknomo 11y ago
      Governments enjoy giving money away to donors, other smaller governments and large private employers, not government employees. Ask any government employee how easy it is to get cash or a raise
      - jerf 11y ago
        There seems to me to be a lot of equivocation in all these replies between "unions" and "employees", substituting whichever one makes the best argument at the time. That's not valid. When discussing "governments negotiating with unions", you can't just suddenly substitute "government negotiating with employees individually"; the incentives are not the same. The governments have little incentive to pay a given individual; they have a lot of incentive to pay blocks of voters, and the especially have a lot of incentive to do so with money from the future, a point I note none of the replies cared to engage with, which I find is a big tell. Since a huge element of the problem with public unions was the enormous pension giveaways, which are now coming due and crushing the ability of the "blue model" to keep the rest of its promises. While everyone here is fiddling, the cities are burning. You can't write about these issues as if we're debating creating public unions for the first time and seeing what happened. We created them. They are, present tense, in the process of crushing city finances, in the most concretely real, dollar-based, actually happening way possible. This is a present fact that must be accounted for, not a hypothetical bad thing that may happen in the future. Unfortunately, yelling "Oh, those wacky libertarians! Well, that concludes that debate." doesn't add a single dollar to the tax base.
- mcculley 11y ago
  I'm generally against unions because I think they too easily and often evolve into serving the organization at the expense of the members. However, if the purpose of a union is to protect against an abusive monopsony, who could be more of an abusive and myopic buyer than the average taxpayer?
- rsync 11y ago
  "I agree. Collective bargaining for public workers is overall absurd, IMHO." What's absurd is that there is some special category of speech called "collective bargaining" and that we treat labor/union/striking speech as somehow different than other speech. I have no idea what collective bargaining is - it just looks like speech to me. I have no idea what a strike is - it just looks like free assembly to me. Why should these be protected or restricted ?
  - snowwrestler 11y ago
    The point of contention is that in some jurisdictions the law forces every covered public sector employee to pay into the union that negotiated the agreement--whether that employee wants to or not. The intention of this rule is to prevent "free riders"--employees who benefit from the union-negotiated agreement, but don't contribute anything to ensure its success. Voluntary unions (no forced contributions) are legal basically everywhere, as you think they would be. But they are obviously less powerful because they have fewer resources, and can't claim that they represent all the workers.
cbsmith 11y ago
I think there is a case to be made for the negotiations to be kept private, but the final agreement to always be public.
- NamTaf 11y ago
  This is how it works in Australia, or at least in my state as far as I can tell: http://www.qirc.qld.gov.au/qirc/agreement_award/awards_online.htm http://www.qirc.qld.gov.au/qirc/agreement_award/awards_onlin...
walshemj 11y ago
Well one argument for it is it stops pay escalation ie the cops in city a get x so we want x+1%. You can see the effect in CEO pay.
eli 11y ago
Do you also believe that your employer should read all your email?
trhway 11y ago
it isn't clear to me why police is allowed to have union at all. They aren't labor. Armed forces (as well as FBI) don't have a union for a reason, and the police is no different in that respect.

by malchow 11y ago

eplanit 11y ago

I agree. Collective bargaining for public workers is overall absurd, IMHO. It injects a layer (the union) between the voters/citizens and the public employees. We don't get to elect/control the union or see their dealings? BS!

sbarre 11y ago
Ehh I think there is definitely a value in allowing a large group of employees to collectively negotiate as one entity with their employer (if only to ensure parity of resources & skills at the negotiating table) but the results should definitely be public (for public service employees).
- pc86 11y ago
  The most commonly cited issue with this line of reasoning is that the root reason for private sector unions (massive power disparity between employers and employees) simply don't exist in the public sphere. Public sector employees often vote for or against their current bosses directly.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > Public sector employees often vote for or against their current bosses directly. That's a very weak bargaining position: Give us what we want or our members, a small minority of the electorate, won't vote for you in two years. Why should they be weaker than other unions?
    - snomad 11y ago
      It isn't just the vote of the membership. It is the dollars of the organization. In California, the California Teachers Union and SEIU are regularly 2 of the top 3 campaign spenders.
      - wfo 11y ago
        So you're saying now that they've banded together as a union, they have bargaining power collectively whereas without it they would have none?
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Are you really saying that there is no power imbalance between the government and the people it employs? The power imbalance is, if anything, much worse here.
CPLX 11y ago
So labor should just take whatever management and politicians feel like giving them like obedient little servants? How has that worked out in the past? Do we feel that the civil service is sufficiently isolated from rapidly changing political pressures to ensure the rights of workers and to avoid the inherent issues involved in political control of a large group of government workers?
- jallmann 11y ago
  You have a point, but civil labor usually has an advantage their private-sector counterparts don't: they elect their bosses. Public unions multiply that power. Whether that's a net benefit for society at large, I'm not going to discuss here.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > civil labor usually has an advantage their private-sector counterparts don't: they elect their bosses. I don't understand this: All unions elect their own leaders, as far as I know. Public sector unions do not elect the heads of the departments where they work, if that's what you mean; the FOP doesn't choose the police chief. If you mean that union members also have votes in general elections, along with the rest of the public, that's true but their influence is limited (there are many other voters), the 'bosses' are a few steps over their heads (the mayor is elected, not the police chief), and finally, that's the point of democracy: Everyone should have influence, from union members to managers to even Repulicans and Democrats.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    I think it might be more accurate to say they elect their bosses' bosses' ... bosses' boss. Unless I've been missing the police captain races on my local ballot?
    - Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago
      In many American jurisdictions sheriffs, prosecutors, mayors, town councils, and even judges are elected. In that case essentially all of the leadership with which a police union might be negotiating is elected. So yes, a police officer's direct boss wouldn't be elected, but in terms of negotiation both a police captain and the rank and file would be aligned in wanting higher pay, making it harder to be fired, etc. In small jurisdictions there would be few layers between a sheriff's deputy and the actual elected sheriff. Also, some of the leadership has a conflict of interest. The prosecutor, one of the ultimate police bosses, cannot work against the police interests without also jeopardizing his own career as the police can stop working with him and get him voted out. This is one of the many reasons why prosecutors tend to treat police brutality cases very differently than if the suspect were an ordinary citizen. Likewise a sheriff might face similar issues since he is elected but his staff is not. Unlike a private sector union, a public sector union can essentially never bankrupt the government, so there is no natural check against their power. Bankrupt your company with absurd work rules? You'll be on the street eventually.
malchow 11y ago
There is a pretty tight formal argument that, whether one is for or against unions, public unions are clearly bad. Here is the latest thing I have read on this: http://www.amazon.com/Government-against-Itself-Public-Consequences/dp/0199990743 http://www.amazon.com/Government-against-Itself-Public-Conse... EDIT: Comment below is hysterical and political. This book is a good read. Chuck Reed, former mayor of San Jose, says this about it: "Daniel DiSalvo has laid bare the harsh political realities facing mayors across the country who want to improve the quality of life in their cities. In the annual battles over cutting services, raising taxes or controlling costs to balance the budget, public employee unions usually have the upper hand. In many jurisdictions, costs are skyrocketing, taxes are up and services are deteriorating, yet fiscal reform seems impossible. This book explains how and why the narrow interests of unions in improving pay and benefits frequently overwhelm the broader interests of the people in improving services."
- CPLX 11y ago
  > There is a pretty tight formal argument that, whether one is for or against unions, public unions are clearly bad. Here is the latest thing I have read on this: http://www.amazon.com/Government-against-Itself-Public-Conse.. http://www.amazon.com/Government-against-Itself-Public-Conse.... Destroying public sector unions is one of the major bullet points on the right wing agenda. Posting a book funded by the Manhattan Institute (i.e. Richard Mellon Scaife, Bill Kristol, etc) should have exactly zero power to convince anyone not interested in being a part of that agenda. EDIT: Wait it gets better, the comment I am responding to was actually posted by someone who has themselves been supported by the Manhattan Institute: http://malchow.com/about/ http://malchow.com/about/ I guess that's how this all works isn't it. EDIT 2: The above commented was edited to read "EDIT: Comment below is hysterical and political. This book is a good read. Chuck Reed, former mayor of San Jose, says this about it..." And 30 second Google search reveals: "San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, in his quest to put a state pension reform measure on next year’s ballot, appears to be buddying up with the Manhattan Institute and possibly its chairman Paul Singer." http://www.sanjoseinside.com/2013/10/24/10_24_13_mayor_reed_vulture_fund_state_pension_reform/ http://www.sanjoseinside.com/2013/10/24/10_24_13_mayor_reed_... I bow to the above poster for illuminating better than I possibly could how the wealthy benefactors of the right wing movement operate on a day to day basis to influence public opinion against labor, right down to comments on HN.
tosseraccount 11y ago
People should be allowed to associate with any clubs, partnerships, unions, corporations or organizations that they want to and the other party is agreeable. If you don't want to join, then don't join. If you don't want to do business with a company or a union, then don't do business with them. There is no need for the government to massively interfere unless there is a real physical danger to citizens.
- TallGuyShort 11y ago
  But if this is collective bargaining involving tax money and people who enforce laws with weapons then this is potentially affecting people who can't choose whether or not they like what's happening. I'm not saying public employees should have no privacy - but this is certainly not a situation where everyone can just do what they want and be left alone. Collective bargaining with the government should be transparent. That doesn't necessarily justify leaking what might contain people's personal information without their consent, but just a point that needs remain in the discussion. Personally, I'm not a fan of the Fraternal Order of Police. We used to support them financially but they were extremely rude and harassed us when we had to step down our donations a bit. There were many people who called us who certainly did not have service to the public as their priority. I don't know much of the context of the dump nor have I viewed it myself, but I'm inclined to be suspicious of them.
- qrendel 11y ago
  In some cases you're required to pay union dues regardless of whether you join or not. This is apparently the case for teacher's unions in 22 states + DC.[1] So "don't do business with them" isn't even always an option. [1] http://www.teachersunionexposed.com/teachers.php http://www.teachersunionexposed.com/teachers.php
  - tosseraccount 11y ago
    Don't want a closed shop? Don't sign a contract that closes the shop. Lots of businesses sign sole source contracts.
  - dalke 11y ago
redthrowaway 11y ago
The public sector is one of the few places that needs a union. There is no competition, no free market to determine wages and benefits, and often no private sector equivalent of the positions involved. There is one monolithic, powerful entity that doesn't move quickly or respond well to changing labour market conditions, and many small, powerless employees whose skills are not always transferable to the private sector. Without unions, it's a setup that would almost guarantee abuse. Unions are certainly not ideal, but they are necessary for that kind of industry.
- jerf 11y ago
  The problem with public unions is that they are not negotiating with an entity that has the motivation to save every penny, which does in fact remove one of the major needs to unionize. Governments care less about giving away money, especially if they're building a voter base in the process. And history rather strongly suggests that governments downright love promising the world tomorrow if you'll just smile for the cameras today. It ends up being both the unions and the government against the tax payer too easily.
  - monknomo 11y ago
    Governments enjoy giving money away to donors, other smaller governments and large private employers, not government employees. Ask any government employee how easy it is to get cash or a raise
    - jerf 11y ago
      There seems to me to be a lot of equivocation in all these replies between "unions" and "employees", substituting whichever one makes the best argument at the time. That's not valid. When discussing "governments negotiating with unions", you can't just suddenly substitute "government negotiating with employees individually"; the incentives are not the same. The governments have little incentive to pay a given individual; they have a lot of incentive to pay blocks of voters, and the especially have a lot of incentive to do so with money from the future, a point I note none of the replies cared to engage with, which I find is a big tell. Since a huge element of the problem with public unions was the enormous pension giveaways, which are now coming due and crushing the ability of the "blue model" to keep the rest of its promises. While everyone here is fiddling, the cities are burning. You can't write about these issues as if we're debating creating public unions for the first time and seeing what happened. We created them. They are, present tense, in the process of crushing city finances, in the most concretely real, dollar-based, actually happening way possible. This is a present fact that must be accounted for, not a hypothetical bad thing that may happen in the future. Unfortunately, yelling "Oh, those wacky libertarians! Well, that concludes that debate." doesn't add a single dollar to the tax base.
mcculley 11y ago
I'm generally against unions because I think they too easily and often evolve into serving the organization at the expense of the members. However, if the purpose of a union is to protect against an abusive monopsony, who could be more of an abusive and myopic buyer than the average taxpayer?
rsync 11y ago
"I agree. Collective bargaining for public workers is overall absurd, IMHO." What's absurd is that there is some special category of speech called "collective bargaining" and that we treat labor/union/striking speech as somehow different than other speech. I have no idea what collective bargaining is - it just looks like speech to me. I have no idea what a strike is - it just looks like free assembly to me. Why should these be protected or restricted ?
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  The point of contention is that in some jurisdictions the law forces every covered public sector employee to pay into the union that negotiated the agreement--whether that employee wants to or not. The intention of this rule is to prevent "free riders"--employees who benefit from the union-negotiated agreement, but don't contribute anything to ensure its success. Voluntary unions (no forced contributions) are legal basically everywhere, as you think they would be. But they are obviously less powerful because they have fewer resources, and can't claim that they represent all the workers.

cbsmith 11y ago

I think there is a case to be made for the negotiations to be kept private, but the final agreement to always be public.

NamTaf 11y ago
This is how it works in Australia, or at least in my state as far as I can tell: http://www.qirc.qld.gov.au/qirc/agreement_award/awards_online.htm http://www.qirc.qld.gov.au/qirc/agreement_award/awards_onlin...

walshemj 11y ago

Well one argument for it is it stops pay escalation ie the cops in city a get x so we want x+1%. You can see the effect in CEO pay.

eli 11y ago

Do you also believe that your employer should read all your email?

trhway 11y ago

it isn't clear to me why police is allowed to have union at all. They aren't labor. Armed forces (as well as FBI) don't have a union for a reason, and the police is no different in that respect.