[detbuch]

It used to be that state and municipal jobs were coveted because of the security and better benefits they provided, even though the pay was less than in the private sector. The slightly less than average salaries, at the time, were more than compensated by the lifetime job security, better pensions, and superior health care packages.

Unionization was discouraged, and strikes were illegal. The payoff was a stable, secure, source of income and life style.

At about the 1960s unionization and strikes by state and municipal employees began to be accepted by some states. Union leaders know how to bargain hard and understand incremental gains. Backed by the liberalized thinking of the era, there was a view that the public sector required more preparation for entry, and was so much more responsible for the well-being of society, that comparative wage scales needed to be more equalized. It made no sense that factory laborers made more than teachers (never mind that it took lots of overtime or seniority to make it so). And if you wanted better teachers, and police, and firefighters, and administrators, you, obviously, had to pay them more. The hue and cry at the time was that the falling quality of educational outcome, for example, was mostly due to the poor pay of teachers. If we wanted the best and brightest to teach our kids, we must be willing to attract those "best" away from the private sector by paying them more. Overlooking the obvious irony that those wanting the pay increase were admitting that they were not the "best and brightest" and, according to their logic, must be the problem, what actually happened was the private sector outbid them in the ensuing wage war for talent. So the existing pool of, apparently not the "best and brightest," wound up getting the better wages, and nothing changed except for the price of the ticket--which steadily rose with every ensuing three year negotiation.

The same results occurred throughout the rest of the public sector. Now we have unionized public workers bargaining under the premise that they not only deserve the better pensions and bennies than the private sector that pays for it which they used to get but also the better pay. All the discussion of whether they deserve it or not is dwarfed by whether that premise can be afforded.