Should public employees be allowed to go on strike?
About 17 percent of workers in the University of Minnesota system, or 3,500 people, have decided to go on strike. (The link is to the Washington Post which, unlike the Twin Cities-papers, doesn’t hide its articles behind an archived firewall.) No surprise, the union says that the action may bring the universities “to a standstill.” KARE-11 reminds us that the last strike, just four years ago, lasted 15 days.
The university and the union are playing the old “is this a raise or not” game. It looks like even with a modest increase in the pay scale, many people will enjoy an even larger paycheck. That’s because paychecks are based on grade and time in service.
You might point out that a strike by university technical and clerical workers doesn’t threaten the public welfare in the same way that, say a strike by air traffic controllers or cops does. And it might also be said that some public sector managers are jerks.
Fair enough, but does any of this mean that government workers should be allowed to go on strike and keep their jobs? The benefits of public sector-employment, such as civil service protection and health and pension benefits that generally exceed those of the private sector, should draw the right to strike by public employees into question.
If you’re unhappy with your government-supplied job, there’s a sure solution: find a new job.
In the private sector, unions and management are free to fight over the corporate pie, and both must keep their eyes on the reaction of the marketplace, which imposes some discipline on each side.
In the public sector, that discipline is severely weakened, limited only to the discipline of politicians. Many of those, in turn, are supported in cash and “foot soldiers” by unions.
You’ve heard of the “iron triangle” of the Pentagon, members of Congress, and military contractors–the military-industrial complex. Equally powerful, and obviously more relevant for states, is an iron triangle of interest groups that receive government grants, public sector unions, and sympathetic legislators. It’s a triangle that threatens a state’s fiscal health. (See California for an example.)