An editorial this week appearing in the Daily Democrat notes, “A new independent California poll showing a dramatic erosion of public support for unions should alarm labor leaders, especially those representing government workers.”
“Residents are fed up with paying for generous salary and benefit packages while listening to cries that it’s not enough. And they’ve lost patience with transit workers’ extortive strikes and threats of walkouts that seriously affect commuters’ daily lives,” the editorial continues. “In just two years, according to the latest Field Poll, public attitude in this blue state about unions has switched from positive to negative.”
“The proportion of registered voters saying unions do more good than harm has dropped from 46 percent to 40 percent; while those saying they do more harm than good has increased from 35 percent to 45 percent,” the editorial continues. “Unions play an important societal role, serving as a check to help ensure fair wages and work rules. For us, the issue is not whether they should exist; it’s how they conduct themselves.”
The editorial notes, “The poster child is BART, where union leader shrill behavior has been offensive. During this year’s never-ending negotiations, riders and taxpayers have waked up. They look at their own compensation, they look at the poor condition of the transit system, they watch district directors give away even more — and they put it all together.”
“In Yolo County, unions still enjoy a plurality of support. Yolo County is, after all, populated by farmworkers, university employees, government workers and is, in general, a blue collar community,” they writes.
It was December of 2009. I had been leading the way, pushing for pension reform while speaking out against the local firefighters’ union. It’s probably not the best idea when your wife is a union organizer and you walk in union circles.
What happened next would be a huge wakeup call, at least for me. My former boss, when I worked in Sacramento, asked me if I would meet with some representatives from the California Labor Federation, as they had some concerns with my writing. My policy was and is that I’ll talk to anyone, and so across the street from the Capitol Building, I met with what turned out to be two representatives from the California Labor Federation.
It quickly became clear that this was not going to be a discussion. My view then, as it is now, is that there is a world of difference between fighting for the rights of people making less than $30,000 a year and protecting the salaries of those making $150,000 to $200,000 in total compensation. If we do not figure out how to rein in those salaries and create a working pension reform, we will have the Proposition 13 of pension reforms rain down on us.
They did not see it that way. They gave me slogans like “united we stand, divided we fall.” They told me that without the firefighters in 2005 on the labor lines, the governor’s reform package might have been approved.
But back in 2009, I warned these leaders that if reforms did not come, we would likely see a Prop 13 of pension reforms. While I think pensions have become excessive, I still support the concept of defined benefits.
Sure enough, we saw a modest measure by Governor Jerry Brown, and now a much more draconian measure by the Democratic Mayor of San Jose.
That measure is in jeopardy, as a group of mayors, county supervisors, city council members and other elected officials from throughout California, including Davis Mayor Joe Krovoza and Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk, “urged San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed to end his effort to put a measure on the November 2014 ballot that would slash retirement security for millions of California’s teachers, firefighters, police officers, school employees and other public workers.”
“Like most Californians, we believe pension matters are best decided locally at the bargaining table rather than the ballot box,” wrote the mayors. “Our cities have been successful in doing just that – as have the overwhelming majority of those in California.”
The measure may be in trouble, but it is also a sign of trouble that a number of moderate-sized city mayors, Democrats, would support the idea to begin with.
At the local level we have seen the impact of unchecked union leadership. The firefighters’ union has become the local poster child for the dysfunctionality of union leadership as it forms a symbiotic relationship with local leaders.
For years, we saw the firefighters’ union effectively run the city of Davis. They pushed through 3% at 50, four on an engine, a 36% pay increase, and they ran their organization through impunity – cracking down on those members who dared to fail to walk the line.
The 2008 Aaronson report showed us some of the worst – retaliation, hostile work environment, and an unfair promotion system.
As Investigator Bob Aaronson presciently wrote in his report, “In my view, and as I would argue is borne out by the labor history in this country, unions have acted as a critical brake on the powers of management to unilaterally impose working conditions on employees. Before the rise of unions (and the intervention of State and Federal governments), many workers faced workplace conditions unimaginable today.”
However, at the same time he added, “It is also the case, as we have seen demonstrated from time to time, that when the power of a union is unchecked, it can work terrible damage on the ability of the workplace to function successfully.”
He writes, “A balance between unions and management is critical for the success of both.”
I watched, over the course of my wife’s career, the mistreatment of workers, both in this state and elsewhere. My wife would be arrested in 2006, protesting the pay and working conditions of janitors in Texas. She would represent state workers here in California, mistreated by incompetent and poorly trained supervisors and even higher ranking managers.
On the other hand, I see a fire union that locally has attempted to block every single measure of reform in Davis from a new contract, to shared management, to staffing cuts.
It was only because, in 2010, we drew the line in the sand on the bungling of campaign resources by the firefighters, that a narrow majority of three has emerged that is willing to stand up against the union – that has engaged in tactics this year ranging from precinct walking, petition gathering, no-confidence votes, and forming astroturf groups of support.
In the end, by a narrow 3-2 margin, we have temporarily seen the union’s influence thwarted. The council by 3-2 votes cut staffing and joined with the university on shared management under Chief Nathan Trauernicht. Council was more broadly disposed to impose a new contract, and did so on a 5-0 vote this week.
We believe that, despite the large support within the ranks, the confrontational stance has probably done the firefighters’ membership more harm than good. Other city employee groups have come out against them, and by failing to work with the city on compromise, the firefighters have created an us versus them dichotomy.
This is all unfortunate because I still believe that unions at their best serve as a needed brake on the excesses of management. Innovations like worker safety and the 40-hour work week would not have occurred without strong unions.
At the same time, not all workers are created equally. I simply believe that when firefighters make $175,000 in total compensation, if not more, we have lost our perspective. There is a difference between people struggling to make $27,000 and preserving their retirement and those making huge wages and benefits.
The bottom line here, as the editorial indicates, is that these are mostly self-inflicted wounds.
Even in the liberal Bay Area, for example, 52 percent of residents say “that public transit workers should not be able to strike; while only 41 percent support their right to walk out.”
This is their own damage and they have damaged themselves greatly with people who were once most supportive of unions.
My fear is that, at some point, even in liberal California, we will have had enough, and at some point someone will float a Wisconsin-style reform and the public might be just fed up enough to support it. We aren’t there yet, but that is a danger.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
David
“My fear is that at some point, even in liberal California we will have enough and at some point someone will float a Wisconsin style reform and the public might be just fed up enough to support it. We aren’t there yet, but that is a danger.”
Your fear? It’s working great in Wisconsin and it’s exactly what we need here in California.
David
“Even in the liberal Bay Area for example, 52 percent of residents say “that public transit workers should not be able to strike; while only 41 percent support their right to walk out.”
Even liberals eventually wake up.
Transit workers should not be allowed to strike for the same reason that cops and firefighters are prohibited fro striking–it endangers public safety.
When tens of thousands of Bay Area commuters who normally take a train to work are forced to drive cars, and the freeways are clogged to the point that traffic won’t move, everyone in need of emergency services is put in peril by a strike. You really want some woman, experiencing a very difficult pregnancy, stuck in a traffic jam because BART workers are on strike? Or if there is a very serious fire in, say, Emeryville, you want the freeways clogged to the point that fire trucks from other cities cannot get there to help out in a mutual aid call?
“Transit workers should not be allowed to strike for the same reason that cops and firefighters are prohibited from striking–it endangers public safety.”
I want to modify that. Transit workers should not be allowed to strike … if doing so endangers public safety or likely will have that effect. The likelihood depends on how congested roadways normally are when buses and trains are operating and what alternatives commuters have in the face of a strike.
Your “fear”
Seriously you haven’t said a nice thing about a union in years and bash them regularly. This blog is so anti-union if unions were outlawed you and most of your regular commenters would dance on their graves. Why can’t you just own your antipathy towards unions? It seems you always want them to do what isn’t in their self interest and then act as if you are supportive. Give it up everyone knows you stand with the anti-union scene that would destroy the middle class and pay everyone Walmart wages while reducing capital gains to zero.
Mr. Toad- I see David’s relationship with unions a little differently then you. I don’t see him as hating unions, I think he values unions and wants them to survive, and because of this he does not want them to continue , what he see, as self destructive behavior.
As they say ^this^
I have spent years of my life working with union members who are truly oppressed. The problem is that I have taste or tolerance for workers making $175,000. I will go to the matt for the rights of workers to earn a fair wage under good working conditions.
I do not understand how you (Toad) can continue to condone behaviors that will destroy the public support – even among liberals – for unions.
For both Mr Toad, GI, and many others…. have generally opposed unions (see how much their leaders’ compensation is, compared to those they represent), but have supported, and participated in employee associations, where none of the leaders are paid, but out of necessity, for large companies and in the public sector, an individual employee can’t ‘cut their own deal’, no matter how effective they are, how much they add value to their employer/stakeholder, etc.
There was/ the farm laborers’ union that did address many pay and workplace safety issues that never would have been addressed without a union, and other unions did that in the distant past. Good thing.
Public employees, whether state, local, teachers, have no right (my opinion) to strike nor participate in a “job action” (slow-downs, churlishness, etc.). They should have the right to make their case to the employer, the taxpayers, etc. by logic, but not by ‘purchasing’ electeds. But individuals who work in the public sector who faithfully execute their duties (often exceeding their job requirements) should be respected, and fairly treated. We also need to find a way (my opinion) to reward public employees who serve ‘above and beyond’, but in my opinion, that won’t happen in a UNION environment.
“That measure is in jeopardy, as a group of mayors, county supervisors, city council members and other elected officials from throughout California, including Davis Mayor Joe Krovoza and Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk, “urged San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed to end his effort to put a measure on the November 2014 ballot that would slash retirement security for millions of California’s teachers, firefighters, police officers, school employees and other public workers.”
The proposal by Mayor Reed–a good one in my opinion–is not in trouble because elected officials, all in the Democratic Party and therefore beholden to union money, power and influence, have announced they oppose it. The real problem for Chuck Reed is that the most of the people of California who vote are still strongly in favor of the unions (on a philosophical, practical, personal or ideological basis) or they are indifferent or they are unaware of the crisis that overly generous pensions have caused the state, our counties and our cities (not to mention the even more serious CalSTRS problems still on the way).
Therefore, when this comes to the voters, the Chuck Reed side will start out at a huge disadvantage. The only way I think he can overcome that would be with a slick and heavily financed propaganda campaign informing the voters who are indifferent or unaware why they need to vote yes. And for two reasons, that will never happen.
One, the unions (led by the teachers) are going to spend $75 million to defeat this and tens of thousands of union members will work ceaselessly to get their vote out and suppress the other side. It’s not going to be the case that Reed and his allies will be able to cleanly and efficiently explain why this measure is good. The Reed side is going to be swamped relentlessly by union propaganda, just as has happened in all recent initiative campaigns fought by the unions.
Two, Reed will never be able to raise as much money as the unions. He will be outspent 10:1. And when you start out with a disadvantage due to our electorate’s prejudices and you have far less money and fewer volunteers with an incentive to win the contest, the result will inevitably be bad for Mayor Reed.
Unions destroy the fundamental partnering relationship of management and labor. They corrupt the natural system of incentives, motivations, value-based consideration, etc. The are like a bunch of hairpins thrown into the gears of the machinery of business. They create the antithesis of a “well-oiled machine”.
The legalization of public-sector unions was a huge national mistake. Even the New Deal hero of the left was clear in opposition to public sector unions. The political motivation for states to start allowing public sector unionization was in response to the demonstrated political benefits. Sort of like Athletes taking steroids… once one started doing it, the competitive benefits/needs outweighed the moral, ethical and rational concerns.
We are paying dearly for the mistake.
The good that public sector unions have done over the last 30 years pales in comparison to the damage they have done.
90% of US labor is NOT unionized. Yet, those continuing to support unionization use the argument that workers cannot effectively negotiate for fair compensation and cannot effectively have their grievances solved.
This is bunk.
In fact, what I hear from most unionized labor is that their unions do a lousy job covering them for grievances. The truth is that these employees would be better off having a qualified HR department simply ensuring compliance with human resource best practice and labor laws.
And in terms of the power to negotiate fair compensation, unions have the effect of underpaying the higher performing employees and overpaying the lower performing employees. With a union involved, there is absolutely no negotiation power ceded to the higher performing employee.
Labor is a commodity in a market economy. Skills and experience add value because of supply and demand and the impact of productivity. Unions benefit the lower skilled and less experienced workers by inflating their wages. However, this also destroys the natural incentives to grow skills and demonstrate greater productivity. Unions make the entire labor collective seek the path of least resistance. Since there is no reward for greatness, few pursue it.
Another thing that unions do is to create career employees. It is natural for new employees to be highly motivated because of the challenges. Anyone doing the same things will eventually become skilled and the challenge to do the job will decline. Then at some point the job becomes easy and comfortable. At about 7-8 years doing the same job, most workers slip from being highly motivated toward new challenges and achievements to be replaced by high-motivation to protect their turf and resist change.
Some jobs have enough inherent change to prevent this motivation malaise. Examples include tech and science jobs… and engineering and manufacturing jobs where products and methods frequently change.
But in the public sector things don’t change much.
And so public sector unions foment a lack of labor creativity and dynamism that is standard in other industries.
Just check out how bad the government fumbled the Obamacare website. They are now relying on help from the private sector to fix their mess.
So, not only do we pay more for public sector labor because of unions, we also end up with tremendous lower value of labor.
Public sector labor unions should be abolished. FDR was wrong on many things, but on this point he was absolutely correct.
Frankly: “At about 7-8 years doing the same job, most workers slip from being highly motivated toward new challenges and achievements to be replaced by high-motivation to protect their turf and resist change.”
Just curious. How long have you been doing your current job? and when will you be changing to something else, in keeping with your dictum?
I have been doing it for 6 years. But was hired a few years after the industry went from having defined territories (more like a government agency) to state-wide hyper competition. In fact, I was hired to help change the company culture to deal with this change. Talk about challenge!. I have employees that have worked here over 20-years. Some of them could not tolerate the change and left… and all of those that left ended up happier in their career. The company is not the same since I joined, and it will continue to change probably up until I quit or get fired for not doing enough to compete, or I retire… which will probably be after at least 3 7-year cycles. But, I would quit and do something else in 7-8 years depending on how much change is occurring because I would feel myself becoming complacent and defensive and resistant to change.
Note that I have an IT background so I am used to being one of the knowing people in the room one day, and then technology changes and I have to dig in again. IT people generally learn early on that complacency leads to obsolescence. Public sector union employees learn to be complacent because there is nothing they can do that will result in their obsolescence… except reach that significant old age of 50 or 55.
“Public sector union employees learn to be complacent because there is nothing they can do that will result in their obsolescence… except reach that significant old age of 50 or 55.”
I think that largely depends on the individual and on what opportunities the individual has to move up within an organization. What you said may be true for most public sector union workers. But such complacency also may be true for most non-union private sector workers at some point in their working lives, depending on the individual and his opportunities.
A guy I went to college with* dropped out after two years and became a firefighter for Los Angeles County. In his entire 30 year** career–he is now retired with a HUGE pension, of course–he was never complacent (on or off that job). He took advantage of what was offered to him, earning his BA and a masters (not sure if it was an MA) at the public’s expense. He worked hard, overachieved, was promoted many times and ended up as an arson investigator (which takes education and a lot of specialized training), a position which pays a boatload of cash.
*I was never friends with him, but we have friends in common, and it is through them I learned his story.
**My understanding is he retired at age 48 after 28 years with LACFD, buying “air time” to make sure he met the requirements of 3% at 50. While employed by LA County, he and his wife opened and now operate a few bars and some restaurants in the Gardena/Bell Gardens area, serving mainly cops, firefighters and other public employees in that area.
Regarding motivation over time: The WSJ had an interesting piece a month ago called, “What Really Motivates Employees?” You can find it here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kensundheim/2013/11/26/what-really-motivates-employees/
One of the 10 points made particularly hits home with my experiences on various jobs: “5. Imposing too many laws, rules and formal processes will often impede the ability to motivate staff. The more set a process is, the less likely it is going to get done correctly.”
I have never worked in a union environment. However, a friend of mine who is in automotive management–now for Toyota in Europe, but previously for a Toyota-GM partnership in Fremont, CA–told me that the union rules of the UAW were the root cause of all of GM’s production failings; and the lack of those sorts of rules for Toyota are the root of its successes as an auto company. He also said that the non-UAW management at GM (up to the highest levels) never had the will or interest in changing that company’s culture. As a result, GM has for decades produced cars which are either badly made or, if well made, too expensive compared with what competitors are putting out in the same class. Toyota, in contrast, is a much flatter company, and the union has no say at all in production processes. The workers, as a result, are much more highly motivated, and treated much more like adults.
This sounds reasonable. Tom Peters and Peter Drucker used to preach the need for companies to have a CDO “chief Destruction Officer”. This was in response to the natural tendency for rules and bureaucracy to develop over time in any organization and cause the performance of that organization to decline. This recommendation was a micro implementation of beneficial creative destruction that is necessary for capitalism to work… the same that is circumvented and corrupted with government bails out failing companies.
I worked for Court Galvanizing in Davis and was a member of the United Steelworkers Union. This was in 1979 and I was making almost $10 per hour. Other than being completely buff (my wife who was my girlfriend at the time still brings that up from time to time… making the point that I am no longer) from pulling and loading racks of steel posts, it was clear that the job was a losing proposition given the work culture and my coworkers. The day I got threatened with a beating by four of them for working too hard and showing them up was the day I recognized how effed up unionization was and how I would never work for a union or manage any unions employees. I got a job with Pacific Standard Life Insurance in the supply department making minimum wage. Six months later I was working in the IT department making around $5 per hour and was so happy I thought I had died and gone to heaven. This was a career where change was the rule, and rules changed constantly. Creativity and problem solving trumped any SOP.
I think there might be a labor-management relationship design that might allow for enough freedom and creativity that I would not be anti-union. However, in my experience, motivating workers and systems to peak performance is hard enough without the extra complication of the egos and competition for power that unions bring to the game. I would rather deal with an ESOP.
What you leave out of your admiration of “creative destruction” is that in order for this to be viable as part of a market economy is that there must be more positions available for those who would seek them. If there is not alternative employment, then the “creative” is missing and there is only destruction. This has been the outcome of applying a philosophy that may have had some validity prior to globalization, but which currently is untenable. If you want one example of how lack of worker protection is more harmful than helpful look no further than how WalMart treats its workers expecting that donations by fellow workers and effectively the tax payers in the form of food subsidies will help support those it will not pay a living wage. You seem very quick to recognize greed in union leaders and very, very slow to recognize it in business owners and financiers.
Meds, you have a very innocent, but clearly elitist, mindset for top-down care. I suspect this comes from your profession as a doctor. I say elitist because your prescriptions always seem to point to someone or some entity in charge as failing to take care of the masses of constituents connected to it.
And with respect to employers, you seem to gravitate toward the negative to the negative without giving thought to the workers’ freedom of choice.
You seem to have this perspective of captivity… that so many workers are captives of their employer. That is simply not the case.
Now, lower skilled employees can be captive because there is so much greater competition for employment at that level. There is greater competition for a number of reasons:
1. Crappy schools cranking out high numbers of dropouts and poorly educated people.
2. Decades of crappy control of our borders and amnesty which has loaded millions of more uneducated people needing work.
3. Loss of manufacturing jobs from globalization.
4. Crappy economic policies of past and present government that has made starting and growing job-producing business much more difficult and costly, and hence has caused job growth to move out of the country.
But captivity is not good. Nobody should like it, and this dislike should be a key component of motivation to get out of it.
Unfortunately, Democrats get their political power from the misery of the captive population. If you are captive, you feel hopeless. So you want someone to save you and give you hope.
The best thing we can do to give a person hope is to teach them to be self-reliant and how to break out of captivity.
We need to drastically improve their education.
We need to encourage them to be enterprising and goal-seeking.
We need to drastically improve the ease and incentives for creating and growing business.
And we need to abolish unions wherever possible because it destroys freedom and creates captive worker robots that have no choice but to keep consuming their host to maintain their sense of hope.
The Forbes piece that Rifkin cites is consistent with a lot of other articles I’ve run into. Those rules (and not following them) do more to explain the degradation of the teaching profession than the presence of teachers unions. I find the heavy blaming of teachers unions for educational failures is a big distraction from more relevant issues of discussion, and suggests to me more political rather than pedagogical motivations.
As school funding has become de-localized and transferred to the state, and in certain ways to the federal government, public education has become over-regulated, especially in the name of education reform. As a result, local community buy-in and ownership of the local school district is diminished in many cities. Note the effects of NCLB (No Child Left Behind) and the heavy reliance on standardized testing in recent years. Those scores in English and math must reach certain standards, no excuses. It makes for great sloganeering but is completely out of touch with the ground level situation.
If teachers and schools don’t meet those target standardized test scores? They get fired, in violation of another principle listed, “2. Employees who are attempted to be motivated by the fear of losing their job will have less energy and drive to complete daily tasks. This will have the opposite of the desired effect.” Michelle Rhee championed this approach Washington, D.C., firing principles who whose schools didn’t reach target test scores. That seemed to demoralize school staff, although Rhee justified it as staff being unwilling to change with the times. And like almost everyone who cares about education, she also threw in there some language about how she was doing it for the kids.
Frankly, in particular, declares teachers unions as being all about job protection for teachers, and that they need some shot of free market fear of job loss to make things better.
The rules in that same Forbes article also argue against the effectiveness of merit pay.
And if teachers unions are all about bilking the public out of money to pay for undeserved exorbitant salaries, then the teachers unions have absolutely failed by that measure. I don’t find teachers salaries high enough to attract me to those jobs, but on the other hand, when I see those Davis firefighter salaries, it does start me to thinking.
Very interesting documentary on Michelle Rhee: (Sidenote: I had no idea until recently that she was married to Kevin Johnson) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/education-of-michelle-rhee/
Stalin shot underperforming generals. Perhaps you anti-union types would prefer taking things to their logical conclusion as opposed to efforts that stop short like those of Rhee in the D.C. schools.