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161 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 17h \ on: Are Government Unions As Scammy As I Think They Are? AskSN
I actually don't think the problem with public sector unions is that staff are aligned with management. Oftentimes, they're not. (I've seen the tensions with my own eyes--and they're often fighting over a fixed budget set outside of union negotiations.)
I think the bigger problem with public sector unions are:
- The types of people attracted to union leadership/membership tend to be comrades, so they let themselves get distracted by macro-causes that don't actually benefit their members
- The incentive structure of government funding pushes towards unions being better at negotiating non-pecuniary benefits rather than simple salary increases.
That's why it's so hard to fire union workers, and why they get such good retirement benefits, but their wage tends to grow more slowly than in the private sector. Wages are also flattened out across the performance distribution.
I don't know how to fix it, but I've always thought we'd have much better teachers (and other public workers) if unions were allowed to negotiate baseline salaries and benefits, but not allowed to negotiate rules regarding promotion and termination.
I could be wrong though, there's all sorts of strange incentives that could arise in a public sector setting that I'm not anticipating.
My overarching sense is that every government department wants to increase its own budget year to year. There is no incentive to shrink. In a private business, money can't just be printed or stolen. I'm sure there are anecdotal examples, but I think the exceptions might prove the rule here. It is true that local and state governments might be constrained at times, but federally it's a free for all.
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They're aligned on wanting more funding, for sure, but there are still areas where the managers would like to be able to dictate terms that the employees don't want to abide by.
I think there's more alignment than in the private sector, because there's no profit share being divvied up between ownership and labor, but there are still points of contention.
Trump's been on a tear lately, ripping up union agreements left and right, so they may not have ever had much bite. That speaks to your point that maybe there wasn't much pressure from the management side of the table until now.
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Oh for sure. But I think that's a problem for every agency, even the ones that aren't unionized.
I was more trying to think about the pathologies that are inherent to public sector unions, specifically
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