FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JUNE 11, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Pay more for better work? Sounds suspicious
Workers have a right to unionize; unions in this country can be rightly
proud of what they've accomplished over the decades -- negotiating mine and
workplace safety, improved wage and benefits packages for skilled workers
in many trades, the list goes on.
Why is it, then, that trade unions in America today seem to be losing
ground in so many of those traditional industries -- while either failing
utterly or declining to even try to organize highly-paid professionals in
such new and highly paid careers as software and silicon chip development?
The days of 5 o'clock factory whistle are fading. As is regularly decried
by the xenophobes, protectionists and various other knownothings, America
has in effect exported many of its lower-paying jobs, preferring to have
foreigners weave our baskets and stamp out our plastic ice-cream scoops.
Such menial tasks as could not be exported are increasingly mechanized.
Could it be the natural development of capitalism and the industrial
revolution moves toward higher-wage, lower-risk employment that makes
traditional union organizing seem progressively less relevant?
For whatever reason, unions today (for all that they continue trying to
organize maids, bellhops, and cashiers) are a growth industry in only one
sector: government work.
Why would that be? Perhaps because bureaucracy is the one place where the
normal rules of the capitalist free market are pretty much suspended,
anyway.
In Las Vegas, the Clark County Commission on June 5 unanimously did away
with its employee merit pay system, after years of hearing union agents
complain that it only allowed county department managers to foment unrest
by "playing favorites."
Under the old system, all employees got a 4percent annual cost-of-living
raise on July 1. Then, on top of that, employees could get merit raises of
0 to 6 percent on their employment anniversaries, based on their
supervisors' evaluation of their contributions and performance. The union
now says it prefers capping all raises at 8 percent, an offer the county
accepted on the assumption it will thus save about $1 million per year.
(The county figures annual raises, with merit thrown in, have actually
been averaging 8.2 percent per year. The union challenges that figure,
contending its members have only been receiving an average 7.7 percent
annual hike -- 3.7 percent being the "merit" component. The county replies
that the new deal will affect all 10,000 county employees, not just the
4,000 that belong to the union -- and taxpayers will thus save the $1
million when the new deal is applied to that larger employee base.)
"It wasn't fair," whines Nevada Service Employees Union manager Tom
Beatty. "It was very subjective" to allow supervisors to allow who got the
larger raises and who did not.
There's an old saying in Russia that a socialist is a person who -- if he
can't have a pig of his own -- would rather see his neighbor's pig killed,
since that would be more "fair." Anyone who thought that was merely a joke
might want to review the current situation among Clark County workers: the
union would rather see total compensation for those workers drop by $1
million, if in return it can end a system where some workers ere rewarded
for outstanding performance.
Why? Because outstanding performance can makes everyone else look bad by
comparison, of course -- anathema to levelers everywhere. I went to work as
a summer replacement mailman when I was a gung ho youngster of 18. I can
still remember being taken aside by a delegate from my fellow carriers
after a few days and told in no uncertain terms that a route rated at seven
hours had better take seven hours -- none of this coming back with the
route done at noon and looking for more work. Go read a book in the park;
play pinball in the back room of the pizza parlor; they didn't care. Just
so I didn't make everyone else look bad.
Ever watched four county employees change a street sign, or the light
bulb in a stoplight? Notice one young fellow working with particular zeal
in hopes of drawing the attention of his supervisor and thus earning a
merit raise? No, I didn't think so.
Isn't it curious how even such regimented outfits as the military seem to
be able to award medals and grant promotions based on "merit" and
outstanding performance without worrying unduly about the "effect on
morale" and "breakdown of solidarity" likely to result from the jealousy of
those who are passed over? No, only in the civilian government bureaucracy
do we see this adamant resistance to the system which leads star athletes
to be paid so much more than the also-rans who warm the bench and hand out
the towels.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to
Privacy Alert, 1475 Terminal Way, Suite E for Easy, Reno, NV 89502 -- or
dialing 775-348-8591. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224, or via web
site www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html
***
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved,
as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V.
Debs (1855-1926)
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and
thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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