I'd gladly lose me to find you
I'd gladly give up all I got
To catch you, I'm gonna run and never stop
--The Who
The 'collective bargaining' controversy continues to be framed incorrectly. The popular lens views the issue as whether public sector workers have the right to negotiate in groups.
This view misses the real issue, which is whether government has standing to negotiate the type of contracts of interest to workers here (i.e., long term wage agreements, closed shop job protection, lucrative pension/benefits).
To the extent that governments have overstepped their Constitutional bounds to engage in activities such as education, then the answer is obviously 'no'--govt has no standing to negotiate w/ workers because those workers should not be on the payroll to begin with. The labor negotations should be taking place in the private sector.
In private industry, profit motive and risk of property loss govern negotiations with management and labor. Rich concessions to labor by management divert property (up to and including control of the enterprise) away from the owners.
This process, grounded in property rights, restrains overconsumption of scarce economic resources.
Negotiations in the public sector face no such restraints. Workers can vote in bureaucrats motivated to kick back rich labor deals in reward for their vote. This is corruption at it worst. Political favor for hire. SIG city.
In the private sector, the principals (business owners) who do not like how their agents (managers of the business) negotiate with labor can walk away--by selling their ownership stake. In the public sector, the principals (tax paying citizens) cannot sell their stake. They are forced to go along by the terms of the deal.
In the short run, this situation allows certain special interest groups (public sector workers and complicit bureaucrats) benefit at the expense of others. In the long run, general standard of living falls as scarce economic resources are diverted from more productive endeavors.
One way both situations are similar is that, given enough time, economic failure kills labor contracts in both private and public sector contexts. Like businesses, governments can default. Default renders public sector contracts void.
And the richer the public sector worker worker labor deals, the quicker that government careens toward default.
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9 comments:
In weighing the question of private or governmental ownership:
1. Every service can be supplied privately on the market;
2. Private ownership will be more efficient in providing better quality of service at lower cost;
3. Allocation of resources in a private enterprise will better satisfy consumer demands, while government enterprise will distort allocations and introduce islands of calculational chaos;
4. Government ownership will repress private activity in noncompeting as well as competing firms;
5. Private ownership insures the harmonious and co-operative satisfaction of desires, while government ownership creates caste conflict.
~Murray Rothbard
Matt,
No one is talking about taking away public education, just the right to collectively bargain. So if collective bargaining rights are taken away, the government will be able to enforce whatever wage and working conditions it wants to on public sector employees.
So given that government wants to take away the bargaining rights but maintain control of education, etc, what's the answer?
Katie
As noted in the missive, the prob is being misframed. The real issue is govt standing for negotiating long term wage and benefit deals sought by public workers (whether the workers bargain collectively or as individuals is moot).
The system's current design, which promotes insidious relationships between workers who can vote in those who they negotiate 'against' (SIG city), and forced participation by taxpayers in deals that are established, guarantee that some will benefit at the expense of general std of living. Freedom and property rights are being infringed.
The solution is to remove govt authority for negotiating long term labor deals.
btw, plenty of people are talking about taking away public education. And at some point, economic forces (which are building to crisis levels yet still largely ignored) will do so.
Matt, Wis and Ohio are trying to take away collective bargaining rights. The legislation does not do anything other than that. That is the immediate reality here. If that happens, doesn't that just make the government even more powerful?
No. Govt is more powerful when it puts political favor for sale, and forcibly takes property from some and gives it to SIGs.
Current legislation reduces capacity for political favor and property appropriation.
Govt power goes down.
I don't buy that Matt. If these bills become law, the government can impose any sort of working conditions it sees fit with very little recourse.
I hope you understand that this IS about SIGs. These GOP governors know that union money funds democratic elections. They want to decrease the power of the union then make union dues optional. Who's going to join a union that has no power to negotiate? That way the unions will be busted, upping the chances that GOP candidates will be re-elected.
Sorry, but I don't think this is about free market principles at all. If it were, the govs in Wis and Ohio would be proposing to privatize public sector jobs.
That is not on the table.
So the only SIG influence that would be diminished would be ones that tend to lean liberal. Conservative SIGs come out squeaky clean.
Couple more things... despite the lack of market forces, public sector employees really don't live high on the hog. Economists mostly agree that they make 4% less than private sector employees with a median salary of somewhere around $26,500. This idea that public sector employees are rich is crazy.
Yes, their pension plans are an issue, but those were put into place to attract people into the public sector in the first place.
And let's not forget that the WIS unions have already agreed to these financial concessions necessary. The Gov just wants to bust the unions for reasons listed above.
Did Gov Walker take a pay cut or a cut in benefits for himself? Kasich?
Socialism has predictable consequences. We're witnessing them in the US and around the world as govts struggle to scrape together economic resources to compensate for declining stds of living.
People can protest/rationalize, politicians can kowtow, SIGs can lobby.
Such denial fuels the collapse of the socialistic system that we have been building.
My point is that busting the unions isn't going to get us any closer to what seems to be your ideal.
One brick removed from wall in correct direction.
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