Mickey Kaus, reporting on cute municipal union hijinx — sabotaging signal lights as part of a “job action”— writes:
There is some logic to paying private sector employees according to how much disruption they can cause during a strike (which is roughly what U.S.-style collective bargaining does). There’s a lot less logic to paying government employees according to how much disruption they can cause–that disruption is often immense, even when strikers don’t resort to extralegal means.
I think Mickey gets it all wrong, except his conclusion. The problem is not the scope of the disruption. A strike by private UPS workers will do more to upset the economy than a strike by the Clifton Animal Control Department. The problem is the principle of the thing: Public employees work for the public by virtue of a calculation, made at some point in the policy-making chain, that what they do is best done by government — and that the public will (on pain of imprisonment) fund their salaries.
Competition is not an option: Government has declared that the services being provided are of Public importance, such that only The Public can provide them to The Public.
Forget the scale of disruption. Forget the bloated benefits and cushy pensions. Forget the fact that public employees’ employers are (virtually) never at risk to go out of business. The flip side of having a salary that your employers can go to jail for not paying is that you can’t strike against them, or otherwise go outside the bounds of good labor behavior, ever.
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Personally, I can’t even stand the ideas of unions for government workers. I’m not the biggest fan of unions in general, but at least I can see the point in collectivizing in dealing with a private employer, particularly about issues like negligent working conditions. But the government is supposedly protecting people against that in the first place, so why should those conditions exist in government? The answer is they don’t.
Paraphrasing Heinlein (because I can’t remember the exact quote): Any government employee who thinks he is not getting paid enough is free to quit and find a real job.
Is it possible to go to jail for not paying a salary?
–|PW|–
Well, pennywit, I think Ron’s being a little indirect here. Their salaries come from tax dollars, and tax dollars come from our pockets; and if we don’t pay those, then we go to jail. So where a traditional employer has leverage (”Do the job, or don’t get paid”) and a traditional customer has leverage (”Provide the service, or I’ll take my business elsewhere, and you won’t get paid”), we are compelled as “customers” to pay for the service whether we get it or not. If we don’t, we go to jail.
So if I’m understanding — and this is to me a novel argument, and I’m still thinking it through — he’s arguing that the justification for no-strike laws is that since we don’t have leverage to compel them to work, they should not have leverage to compel us to give in to their demands.
It’s a novel argument to me too.And a deep one.And I too am still thinking it through.Thanks Ron.
Public-sector unions can have the right to strike just as soon as I can have the right to withhold the portion of my taxes that pay them while they’re out.
Yeah, I think you guys get what I’m saying. Sorry I didn’t say it more straightforwardly.
I think it was strauightforward enough for me to get it in my fever-addled brain, Ron. I’m still just thinking it through.
I come from a union family and am, on principle, pro-union. I also come from a background in both union and non-union work, and have come to the conclusion that unions today abuse their leverage at least as often as employers abuse theirs. I’m kinda a pox on both their houses guy when it comes to unions today.
But until now, my only position on no-strike laws has been: if it’s a law, then enforce it, damn it! But I know better: was anyone the least bit surprised when a judge decided not to impose any sanctions on Detroit teachers for their illegal strike this year? Disappointed, yes, because it teaches kids to disrespect the law; but not surprised.
But until you raised this argument, I had no real opinion on whether no-strike laws for public employees were good or not. Now I’m starting to see the point.
The response to any strike by public employee’s should match Reagan’s response to the Air Controllers Strike in the mid 80’s – get your @$$ back on the job or go find other work.
I’m public sector and unionised [despise unions, but never mind that for now]. The main legit use of a union in the public sector is to protect the employees from political or other reprisals, not strikes.
Reagan’s response to the Air Controllers Strike was contractually required of him. Rightly or wrongly, the contract in force which they were trying to renegotiate contained a no-strike clause. You cannot enter into a new contract with someone in violation of their current one because they are not negotiating in good faith.
I think Mark has put his finger on the utility of public service unions. They don’t exist to call strikes, but to ensure employee against abuse and reprisals.
At State, there are basically two unions, one for General (Civil) Service employees, one for Foreign Service employees. Many at State belong to both; many belong to neither.
The union I know best, AFSA which serve the FSO community, lobbies State Dept. leadership, the Administration, Congress, and the public (through the media) to ensure equitable treatment of FSOs as compared to other federal employees (of which agencies depends on the issue at hand).
For instance, the gov’t pays ‘locality pay’ to adjust incomes of employees working in higher-than-average cost of living places. That adjustment becomes part of basis upon which retirement income is based.
FSOs working overseas may or may not get local cost of living adjustments to their pay, but that money did not become part of their pay record for retirement purposes. AFSA lobbied successfully to get the DC locality pay factor included in FSOs’ income for time served abroad. Not the actual pay, but the result of the pay on retirement.
That wasn’t a bad thing, as far as my particular ox is concerned, though it only affected the last 18 months of my employment record.
Similarly, AFSA took the case of female FSOs who were–at least statically–being block from promotion and would-be FSOs from entering State Dept. as new employees. A protracted court case followed, with a $45 million settlement, job offers to women who had been rejected from entry, and enhanced promotion likelihood for women in the service. Didn’t work out all that well for me, as a male, unfortunately, as promotions into the Senior Foreign Service (between 7-9 annually) went predominantly to women (they’d get 6-7 slots) when I was looking for that particular promotion. That meant that I was competing against all male FSOs at my grade for one or two positions. Tough going.
I can’t argue that the process was ultimately unfair, but it didn’t help the males who may or may not have been personally responsible for depriving women of promotion opportunities. Since I received several EEO awards during the period, I assumed there was nothing against me personally, but institutionally, well….
AFSA also worked successfully to get rid of an archaic rule that prevented female FSOs from marrying (literally); to change annual evaluation forms (including the dropping of an ‘unofficial rating’ on spouses’ and dependants’ behavior; to deal realistically with Gays, people with AIDS, and people with various physical handicaps in the workplace.
As a manager, I’ve had several grievances filed against me. Because I was a good manager, none of them prevailed. But there certainly were State employees who did have valid grievances against management. The unions generally did a good job of fighting for the employee, winning a fair share of the cases they handled.
I definitely agree, though, that ‘no strike’ clauses in public service employment contracts should be read as written and strictly enforced.
I would agree with the principle that if people who refuse to pay their taxes go to jail, then there’s nothing wrong with having tougher requirements on taxpayer-funded employees.
But, since almost no one goes to jail for refusing to pay taxes–including countless people who actually have refused to pay taxes–I am not sure I can accept the logic.
In almost all cases that I’m aware of, including with the IRS, you can refuse to pay any tax. All you have to do is say, “screw you, no, I’m not paying it.” If you do, I know of no case in American law where you’d go to jail for that. No, not even if you do it to the IRS.
What would happen if you simply refused to pay your tax is, you’d get dunning notices, and collections letters. Penalties and interest would accrue. Eventually, if you continued to refuse to pay, you would be sued–usually in state court, even if it’s a Federal tax. There would be a judgment against you unless you could prove you didn’t owe the money. Then, if you had any major assets, the creditor would ask a court to seize them in order to pay your debt to them.
In other words, assuming you don’t commit any actual fraud, if you simply refuse to pay, then it’s exactly the same as if you refused to pay a credit card company or someone else you had a loan with.
It’s a little harder to declare bankruptcy against the government, but as it turns out it’s not that much harder. Mostly, the government has to play by the same rules as any private creditor.
So the libertarian argument–that government extracts taxes on pain of death–is more than a little hyperbolic in the vast majority of cases.
That said, I’m sympathetic to the idea that public sector employees should not be able to strike. In fact, I’d probably go further: I’m not sure they should be allowed to unionize at all. But maybe that’s wrong on my part; what I object to with unions is usually the “fatcats vs. the helpless victims” mentality. What I praise in unions is the concept of collective bargaining, which is entirely valid.
I would say that a no-strike clause is a genuine agreement though, and if you signed one then you’re bound by it.
By the way, I would also object:
If we’re going to have tougher requirements on public-sector EMPLOYEES, we should also have tougher requirements on any corporation (or other business) that does business with the government.
If we’re going to take this aggressive stance, let’s take it all the way is all I’m going to say. The public service employee is no more of a crook than a corporation that provides services to the government.
Indeed, when you look at the big corporations that get tens of millions, hundreds of millions, even billions in direct government cash payouts (not even talking “tax writeoffs” here, I mean direct cash disbursements in exchange for a service), should they not be treated with the highest possible level of scrutiny, at least as stringent as those levelled at any individual government employee?
Indeed, who would be the bigger crook, the individual congressman who took a $100,000 bribe, or the government contractor corporation that defrauded the taxpayer of two or three billion?
Just to keep our questions in perspective, here.
(In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m very weary of the conservative/libertarian defense of mega-corporations. This is not 1975, and the biggest problem in the world at the moment is NOT how mean we are to massive corporations.)
The main legit use of a union in the public sector is to protect the employees from political or other reprisals, not strikes.
That’s certainly a legit use of unions.
But .. when I contracted at $governmentagency the main use of the union seemed to be to get federal employees the best offices, protection from being fired due to incompetence, and to inflict petty booshwah on the non-union contractor staff.
It soured me some on unions for public employees to see that stuff.
I’ve never agreed with the principle that
1) Government workers can unionize
or
2) Government workers’ screwups can be used as grounds to sue the government and take the taxpayers’ money
In both cases, it’s tax money we’re talking about. The government has no money of its own, and it should be treated as such.
In almost all cases that I’m aware of, including with the IRS, you can refuse to pay any tax. All you have to do is say, “screw you, no, I’m not paying it.” If you do, I know of no case in American law where you’d go to jail for that. No, not even if you do it to the IRS.
Hmm? Well, tax fraud (which they put Al Capone away on) isn’t the same as refusing to pay, I suppose. The government might not be able to put you in jail for refusal, but they can get a civil judgement and seize all your assets.
Hmmm, the all-knowing wikipedia seems to imply you can be charged too:
Some tax evaders believe that they have uncovered new interpretations of the law that show that they are not subject to being taxed: these individuals and groups are sometimes called tax protesters. However, many protesters merely rehash the same arguments that courts have rejected time and time again.
Tax resistance is the refusal to pay a tax for conscientious reasons (because the resister does not want to support the government or some of its activities). They typically do not take the position that the tax laws are themselves illegal or do not apply to them (as tax protesters do) and they are more concerned with not paying for what they oppose than they are motivated by the desire to keep more of their money (as tax evaders typically are).
…
Application to tax protestors
This statute is an example of an exception to the general rule under U.S. law that “ignorance of the law or a mistake of law is no defense to criminal prosecution.” Under the Cheek Doctrine (Cheek v. United States[15]), the United States Supreme Court ruled that a genuine, good faith belief that one is not violating the Federal tax law (such as a mistake based on a misunderstanding caused by the complexity of the tax law itself) would be a valid defense to a charge of “willfulness” (”willfulness” in this case being knowledge or awareness that one is violating the tax law itself), even though that belief is irrational or unreasonable. On the surface, this rule might appear to be of some comfort to tax protesters who assert, for example, that “wages are not income.”[16] However, merely asserting that one has such a good faith belief is not determinative in court; under the American legal system the trier of fact (the jury, or the trial judge in a non-jury trial) decides whether the defendant really has the good faith belief he or she claims. With respect to willfulness, the placing of the burden of proof on the prosecution is of limited utility to a defendant that the jury simply does not believe.
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