For those of you following the public union fights in the Midwest, I recommend Steven Greenhouse's story in today's New York Times.? According to Governor Mitch Daniels and other Hoosier state government managers Greenhouse spoke to, Daniels' 2005 executive order eliminating collective bargaining by state employees has saved millions of dollars while streamlining services.? Not everyone is happy, of course, but when you hear that because of union rules in Wisconsin a county executive can't close a juvenile detention center that houses just one child, the logic of public sector collective bargaining seems hard to support.? And it is a logical impasse that has so many teacher union representatives tongue-tied.? Here's Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, which represents 98,000 public school employees in the Badger state, worrying to Greenhouse about the abolition of collective bargaining:? ?Layoffs may not be based on merit or effectiveness, but on anything management wants it to be.??
Uh?? This would seem to presume that the union is for merit and effectiveness layoffs.? I guess she has forgotten?about?the Last In First Out union rule.
?--Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
