No offense, but public-employee unions have been an issue in recent years. …
That they are an issue is due mainly to a LOT of misunderstanding. As a former government employee and supervisor, having been on both sides, I can tell you whether gov. unions are good or bad depends on what is negotiable. The general perception in the public’s eye is that they are just the same as private sector unions. This is not the case. Public sector unions cannot negotiate pay, benefits, nor travel expenses, for example. In the case of federal employees, these are determined by congress. I assume state and local governments determine those for their employees.
By contrast, working conditions
are negotiable. In fact, any change in the working conditions is also. There was a very interesting case over this a while back when the DOD got congress to build new visiting quarters for its service members. One of the justifications that helped sell the program was that civilian employees would be required to stay in them as well, to help pay for their operation. When they tried to implement this, the engineers union in my agency objected because it involved a change in the work environment. [Stay with me, here.] The current arrangement up to then paid a certain amount for civilians to stay in commercial lodging; everyone got the same amount for a given locale. With the advent of military lodging, low ranking civilains were assigned lesser quality lodging while higher ranking and management got the better quarters. Bingo! Change in working conditions! This grievance kept everyone, not just the upper crust, out of military lodging in favor of commercial lodging. Thanks to our 106 member union, the whole DOD was stopped from making civilian employees from paying for military quarters.
As a supervisor, I was the subject of a grievance by an under-performing subordinate facing discipline. My position was he did not perform an assignment. His defense was it was not important. In a meeting with his union rep, he made that defense. In an amazing turn of events, his rep said, “Well, Mr. Jones, as a representative of management Mr. “Unstoppable” has the prerogative of determining what is important.” IOW, the union took
my side. You could just see the wind go out of his sails.
Another interesting case involved a union member employee who was always spoiling for a grievance. One day he quit and went to work for another outfit. He didn’t like the job and tried to come back. When he applied for membership in the union, they told him he was not wanted and was thereby not employable by his first employer.
So, you see, unions are not all bad.