Reason why we should not allow collective bargaining in public sector is that it creates grossly unbalanced situation where one side in the bargaining has *much* greater motivation to get the maximum out of the bargain then the other side.

In the bargain between the private sector employer and their workers both sides have same thing - specifically their livelihood - at stake. In the public sector collective bargaining you are pitting workers for whom every dollar and privilege won is a dollar more they get to take home or a privilege they get to keep every day at work, against the politicians and civil servants who are in effect dolling out someone else's money.

Politicians are at best times not particularly frugal with public money, when you pit them against the well organized groups who are determined to get what they want and are also at the same time wielding reasonably potent political influence too there are very few politicians and/or bureaucrats who will do what amounts to doing their fiduciary duty to the tax payer and getting a best deal possible.

As a result, except in the very small number of cases where principled and determined politicians stick out, public will, as a rule, get bad deal when public sector unions are involved.

Similar sort of problem occurs when the government puts in contracts with private businesses for services and supplies (public tend to get the bad end of that deal too) but in this case, the problem is recognized and addressed (usually) through a very strict set of tendering rules none of which apply to governments negotiating with unions. To make matters worse, government expenditure on unionized labour is orders of magnitude above what any government spends on procurement from private sector.

In Canada (BC at least) public sector wages - particularly when adjusted for very generous pensions and other benefits - easily outstrip private sector wages for similar jobs. This is without even accounting for much greater job security and the effective absence of competency-based firing and/or promotion.

From what I know about the situations in England and France, situation is very similar there, I can not speak about Netherlands so it is possible that it is an exception to the rule - though I doubt it.

At least I restated the argument in my own words, Mr. I have tons of GeekGold, so all I'll do is repost other people's arguments and then tip them for the privilege smarty pants!!!!!

Darilian

Philosophically, its the fact that its impossible to really control them. Either you give into what they want, or the police (or teachers, or bureaucrats) go on strike- which are generally more powerful strikes than those done by laborers in private industry. The result is mad voters, who demand that their government officials give in to the public unions, who then never have any reason to ever just NOT make even more demands.

BJ;

What has you so convinced companies should bargain spearately with each and every employee about their contract? Do you really think in sme alternate universe this would save time and money for businesses? Why is collective bargaining such a bad thing in your mind? Why shouldn't employees get the same beenfits of a market system that businesses do?

But isn't that just simply the market? These workers do a job that it's important and have the political power to back that up because people really need/want their services, it's a relatively highly trained job and there's a shortage of people who can/want to do it, so they can demand to be paid well for doing it.

It is not the market. Market would work if government was allowed to hire replacement workers at market rates in cases where union does not want to agree on a contract. If there are people out there who are ready and able to do the job at the rates (and conditions) cheaper then those demanded by the union then there is no market mechanism at play at all.

In the public sector "employer" is a bunch of politicians who are only partially interested in the best possible outcome for the public (who play the role of the "owner"). Quite often there is many more votes to win by giving in to the union then in taking care of the public interest, particularly when the actual impact on public interest will occur many years after the next election.

Secondly, there is nothing whatsoever to stop union from disrupting the process indefinitely.

At the same time, public sector unions get routinely awarded contracts by the politicians whom they financed and continue to finance without even a pretence of independent scrutiny.

Fourthly, with their insistence on job security, seniority based promotion and formal process (as opposed to result oriented goals or customer service) unions reinforce and emphasize the worst aspects of the large bureaucracies that government services often are.

I don't how this is any different for teachers than it is for any other unionised technical field.

Unions demand a certain rate, if it isn't met, all the union quits/strikes. If the company/school can afford to hire enough people to refill their staff, then there's no problem. If they can't, then they have to deal with the union.

That leads to a powerful union, no doubt. But that's only because the skills of the union members are high and rare (relative to demand).

Here, however, and in most of USA - as far as I know - government is legally bared from even attempting to hire replacements in case of strike no matter how many qualified teachers there may be out there and what rates they would be willing to work for.

On top of it goes the second objection as to how *motivated* is the government to try and get the best deal for the public, particularly if it happens to be left-wing government whose party is financed largely by the union. It would be as if government routinely awarded tender-less contracts to their large corporate backers and then called it a market mechanism.

I don't think this is a situation any different from a company manager who gives in (or refuses to give in) to union demands to allow short term benefit until they leave or the shareholders sell off their stokes.

The fact that there's more votes in giving in to union demands seems no different to me than there being more cash to be made by giving in to certain union demands. It's a different measure of success, but it's still a strong pressure on politicians. After all, there's many, many votes to be gained in saving money and cutting taxes as well.

Of course there is. There is the pay of their members, public opinion and the demands of parents. This isn't exactly the same as the company going broke, but that's only because there will always be a customer demand for education because there will always be kids. Moreover, while there will always be schools and public transportation, any given school, and any given public transport system can certainly shut down.

Again, the fact that it is more difficult to shut down schools or a public transport system and use that threat to end strikes seems to me to be a natural consequence of the importance of the job and how hard it would be for any other system to step in and solve the problems.

This I agree with. Though it doesn't really apply to teachers.

I guess I don't agree that this is any different in the private sector, it's just easier to hide it there.

For my own summary, it's massively important for governments to attract good teachers. If anything, it's perhaps the most important thing that governments can do, beyond basic stopping anarchy in the streets. If teachers aren't well paid or stripped of rights, then people who would be good teachers are going to go do something else. There's no public good in that.

That certainly seems strange to me too.

I think politicians are very motivated to be able to cut taxes.

Of course, politicians are most motivated to cut taxes and spend lots on services. But this is hardly an issue purely to do with unions. Indeed, the problem is universal in politics, not just to do with unions.

But I don't think your analogy quite works. Unions represent the governments employees. Giving work to the teachers hired by the government to be teachers isn't really the same as awarding a contract to an outside agency. If a company makes widgets in one of it's factories, it's not going to be a surprise that if part of the company needs widgets they take them from the factory they own. If some company that makes lightbulbs uses lightbulbs from their own factories to light their offices, that's not corruption.

Yes, agency problem exists in private sector too. It is just worse in public sector as in private sector unions - as a rule - do not vote for / finance the manager of the company they work in.

It is standard problem of small pressure group always being more powerful then broad public interest. Raise of 15% for, say, 20.000 public school teachers is drop in a bucket of a general budget and would amount to something like 0.1% increase in taxes. There is more votes to be had in giving fair chunk of money to 20k people (particularly if they are well organized) then in lowering everyone's taxes imperceptibly.

This I agree with. Though it doesn't really apply to teachers.

Inefficient private sector organizations get overtaken by competition and go bust. Inefficient government monopolies persist indefinitely while providing bad services.

Unionized schools on the other hand are *not* excellent. Disaster that is USA public education system is one notorious example but UK and Canada are not much better either.

Public sector unions are not "closed shop" where you are ? That is certainly a great step forward compared with most places I know of.

It is not a question of giving work - it is a question of giving them salaries/perks they demand. If a group of incumbent employees pays a politician to get elected, and then this politician decides on how much this employees get paid in return through their salaries then this at least dangerously smacks of corruption.