Nassau County in New York State Joins Wisconsin, Ohio and All the Other Places Where the Battle Over Collective Bargaining Rights and Public Employee Union Contracts is Being Fought

I cannot be at the Rally Against Layoffs, for which this video was made, because I will be working with my union on my college’s budget crisis, but I would be there if I could:

Cross posted on It’s All Connected

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7 Responses to Nassau County in New York State Joins Wisconsin, Ohio and All the Other Places Where the Battle Over Collective Bargaining Rights and Public Employee Union Contracts is Being Fought

  1. 1
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Why do you support this?

    I read the rally invite (though can’t see the video.)

    Do you think that laying off people, or freezing their wages, or declining to give them 100% health benefit coverage, is immoral?

    Do you think that the jobs which these folks fill are inherently worthy of existence? More so than other jobs? More so that positions which are filled by UNorganized labor?

    Do you think that THESE people in particular are unusually important? That they–more so than anyone else–are worthy of being employed, getting benefits, etc?

    There are a lot of unemployed people in that state. Should the existing “can’t fire us, neener neener” contract employees be able to maintain their publicly-funded jobs, even if they’re not doing them as well as someone else would do, and even if other folks would take them? (Don’t forget that this has an effect on the unemployed seeking work, and also on the public who is purportedly the beneficiary of those labors.)
    Why are you on this side of this particular fight?

  2. The simplest answer to your question–and I am not inclined to get into a huge debate with you about unions, efficiencies, public employee contracts and all–is that I have a stake in this fire. I am a public employee and if a fiscal emergency is declared and the county executive can open my contract, my job could be on the line in the not to distant future, and I would be one of those people whose salary it would be very tempting to take off the payroll despite the fact that I am very good at what I do.

    I do not think that layoffs, or wage freezes or asking people to contribute to their health benefits are in and of themselves immoral. My own union has agree to a couple of those over the course of the years I’ve been working where I work; and we also agreed to a salary giveback when the financial situation called for it; and, just for the record, the faculty leadership on my campus does accept that dealing with our fiscal crisis would almost certainly require that some people would lose their jobs. I do think, though, that when those things are motivated at least as much by the political expediency of making public employee unions a scapegoat for financial problems that are not primarily or even secondarily of our making, then there is a real problem and that needs to be resisted.

    And this I think is the wrong question:

    Do you think that THESE people in particular are unusually important? That they–more so than anyone else–are worthy of being employed, getting benefits, etc?

    It is the wrong question not just because the obvious and only answer is no; it is the wrong question because the fact that other people are not unionized in their workplaces and do not have the job protections and benefits that I have does not make the fact that I have them somehow immoral or elitist or whatever.

  3. 3
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    And this I think is the wrong question:

    Do you think that THESE people in particular are unusually important? That they–more so than anyone else–are worthy of being employed, getting benefits, etc?

    It is the wrong question not just because the obvious and only answer is no; it is the wrong question because the fact that other people are not unionized in their workplaces and do not have the job protections and benefits that I have does not make the fact that I have them somehow immoral or elitist or whatever.

    Obviously? Er, no.

    Unions like to focus on Joe Jobless, the poor union man who suffers when he gets fired. They don’t like to focus on (or acknowledge the existence of) JANE Jobless; Jane is Joe’s equal–or perhaps his superior–in terms of qualifications. But she is unemployed, and only gets a job if Joe is fired.

    There may be a reasonable conclusion that (all things being equal) it’s a superior outcome to keep Joe in the job, and send Jane off to find something else. But even if it’s reasonable–and I’m not convinced–that conclusion sure as hell isn’t obvious.

    I should set out my position more clearly, because I’m curious about the scope of our disagreement. I don’t care about benefits: Benefits are good. It’s fine to have a minimum wage; it’s even fine to have a minimum wage for a given position (as might happen in a union contract context.) It’s fine to lobby for better working conditions. All those things are good…. on their own.

    My main source of protest is the interference with hiring/firing. Last hired/first fired; rehiring by seniority; automatic raise/promotion steps; union membership rules; and the ability to fire only for gross malfeasance; are all excellent examples of this.

    I’m not alone. MOST people who dislike unions don’t really care about whether people work 39 or 42 hours, or whether they pay 100% or 50% of their health care costs. No, what drives people nuts is the combination of those benefits and lack of selectivity.

    If you’re good at your job, then you should keep your job. Perhaps you should even get a huge raise. But you’ve chosen to throw your weight behind a group whose underlying mantra is to AVOID the individual effect of performance. And if you’re above the curve, then you’re subsidizing all the folks who aren’t as good as you are.

    Folks are less tolerant of that, these days. They’re especially intolerant when it comes to paying those folks with public money, to provide a public good, in a time of soaring unemployment. Sure: in a society where everyone has a job, then you’re going to get some incompetent slackers that you need to employ. You can just put them at the DMV counter. That’s a hell of a lot harder to justify when you’ve got 10 people who are more qualified than the slacker, but are unemployed. If some folks are getting paid to serve the public and other folks are stuck on welfare/unemployment, why does the slacker belong in the first category? Why deny the opportunity to the unemployed public. And–equally important–why allow the slacker to SERVE the public, when someone else could do it better?

    (I used to work at a high powered corporation that went through huge layoffs. We could all guess who would survive the cuts. We all knew who the top performers were; we all knew who the brains were, and we expected them to survive. We were usually right. I also used to be closely involved with a unionized entity that went through huge layoffs. We all knew who the top performers were; and who the brains were. We also knew who had seniority. They weren’t the same group. Guess who got laid off? Why would you support that, especially if you’re a top performer?)

  4. I think, G&W, you misunderstood what I meant when I said the only and obvious is answer is no, because what I meant is that Joe is not particularly important or more “worthy of being employed, getting benefits, etc.”

    Regarding your positions about “last in/first out” and etc., we’ve had that disagreement elsewhere, and I don’t have the time–and this is not a dismissal of you, I truly don’t have the time–to engage it again in any serious and substantive way.

  5. 5
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    OK. Sorry if I misunderstood you. (I honestly still don’t get that from rereading it, though…)

    Good luck.

  6. 6
    JutGory says:

    G&W;
    For what it’s worth, I think I see the disagreement. You were talking about Jane’s being shut out from Joe’s job because of union policy, etc.

    I think when you asked your question, it could have been read as, “is Joe (over here in Job A) any more deserving than unemployed Jane (who is looking at Job B).” As you made more clear in your second comment, there is only one Job and the union should not prevent Jane from taking Joe’s job if she is better or cheaper.

    To put it another way, the OP answered a question you were not trying to ask, that is why his answer did not make sense to you.

    For what it’s worth.

    -Jut

  7. 7
    RonF says:

    Very well produced video. Unfortunately it doesn’t make clear what the issues are. Whose contracts are being opened? What does “opened” mean? What is the financial status of the entity doing the opening? What percentage of their financial woes are ascribable to the payroll, benefit, pension, etc. payouts represented in the contract? Are there terms in the contract that permit it to be “opened” if some governmental body or official declares a “financial emergency”.

    I’m certainly suspicious when someone proposes breaking a contract. You signed it, you live by it. Of course, here in Illinois the real contract that the State and County and City governments tend to have with public unions is “we give you what you want and you campaign for us”, and that’s never broken (which is one main reason why I oppose public unions overall). But if there is a contract and the governmental entity is using some extra-legal non-contractural mechanism to break it then I have to be in favor of the union.

    This video, however, raised more questions than it answereed.