Advice to Wisconsin protesters (and everyone else): Instead of protesting change, adjust your own career
My favorite place for pizza in Madison is Ian's. My kids go there in the summer for macaroni and cheese pizza. They order it because it sounds so fun, but then they don't eat it.
Ian's is located right on the Wisconsin State Capitol, where 70,000 people are protesting that Governor Walker is repealing almost all collective bargaining rights of public workers. For the last six days of protests, Ian's has been taking orders from all over the world — Korea, Egypt, New Zealand, and 51 states — to deliver pizzas to the protesters. Ian's keeps track of worldwide pizza support on a blackboard:
It's a nice story. But the issue in Wisconsin is more fundamental than pro-labor or anti-labor. The issue is that the workforce is changing. Some of the groups having the hardest time dealing with this change are the unions, and protesting change is not going to help.
1. Recognize when you're in a dead sector, and shift.
I don't think we need unions anymore. I think they are leftover from a different type of workplace and a different type of economy. I am not revolutionary in saying that we don't need unions.
In general, I'd have to say that the non-union part of the work world is sick of unions wielding insane powers that are anachronistic and unrealistic. Maybe I could understand this if it was 1880 and we had children working in factories. Maybe I could understand this if all government work were as unappealing as being a garbage collector. But in fact, government jobs are so insanely cushy, for their stability, that it's one of Gen Y's favorite sectors to work.
So many people are frantically reacting to a shifting job market — journalists, travel agents, lawyers, all these sectors are changing rapidly right now, and careers are being destroyed. But other opportunities are growing. Instead of lamenting that your job is changing for the worst, find out what new jobs are emerging because of the change, and make a change yourself.
2. Create stability for yourself with new career tools.
A sustainable career today involves constant job changes, lots of career changes, and an entrepreneurial spirit. For example, the average Gen Y-er starts looking for a job on the third day of their current job. Not because they are disloyal, but because they are realistic in that no job lasts forever, and few last even two years. Career changes used to be something saved for mid-life crises, but today, people can expect to change careers five times, which means that the idea of a pension is off the radar. Finally entrepreneurship is so popular today because it's a safety net for an unreliable workplace.
Unions are not part of this equation. Unions trade on their ability to protect peoples' jobs over the long-term. But this assurance is ananchronistic and not appropriate for the reality of today's workforce.
3. Stop focusing on the meta. Just fix your life.
So many people say they can't get a job because it's a bad economy. But you know what? There are enough jobs. You can't get a job because you're bad at job hunting. You're bad at marketing yourself and you're bad at shifting as the economy shifts.
No career was ever saved by blaming someone else for your troubles. So look, it's true that Scott Walker was selective in the unions he's trouncing. He's picking on teachers and leaving police alone. So, yes, it's conniving, but so what? Of course he has to be conniving to disband government unions.
But it doesn't matter, because the demise of government benefits is inevitable. It's inevitable that unions would be killed — either by lack of interest or government action. Their time has come. Stop blaming people and just move on.
4. Stop picking jobs based on long-term benefits.
This is a worldwide problem, not a Wisconsin problem. So if you think it's not gonna happen to you, you're wrong. The era of benefits is over, so stop picking your jobs based on the benefits.
Here's the math: Baby boomers are huge, Gen X is relatively tiny, which means demographically speaking, there are not enough people in this country to support the generation that is retiring.
(I will now quote tons of economist things from my brother, Marc, who has a PhD from University of Chicago in economics and he's smart enough to go into hedge funds instead of teaching, but not so smart that he doesn't stop talking to me even though he thinks every time I write about him on my blog I misquote him.)
Anyway, he says this demographics thing is a worldwide problem, and it is worst for countries like Japan, France, and China, where the birth rate is tiny compared to the earlier generation. (The developed economies that do not have this problem are the Middle East and Israel.
“What? I said to my brother. We don't put Israel in the Middle East?”
“Economist consider Israel's economy to be tied to Europe's.” )
The only way to fix this problem is to renege on the benefits that states have promised government workers. The US economy simply cannot grow enough to solve the problem any other way.
5. Getting fired is a gift.
It is absolutely insane that teachers in unions cannot be fired. One of the first things Michael Bloomberg, mayor of NYC, did when he got control of the public schools is that he started firing teachers who did not perform well. He had a knock-down drag-out fight with the union and he won.
Because how else can schools improve if teachers can't lose their jobs? You know what? Some of those tenured teachers suck. We all know that. And it's not helping anyone — the teachers or the kids — to keep teachers who can't teach. One of the best part of a fluid workforce is that you have to find where you fit well in order to get some security.
Wisconsin public schools are among the lowest performing in the country. So it makes sense to me that this is one of the first teacher's unions to get dissolved. And, this is a great example of how a union has outlasted its usefulness to the community.
6. Change is exciting. It opens new doors.
Look at Ian's. They watched changed and they figured out where they fit in, and they actually did well by embracing change. You can do that, too. Don't blame other people for your problems. Don't try to stop the path of change. Each of us has gifts that we can use in any type of workforce. We just need to be flexible enough to see our own potential.
Public employees contribute a significant amount of money from their salary toward their pensions. So should if the pension system is broken shouldn’t they keep whatever money they have contributed thus far?
What currently is happening in Wisconsin, Indiana and elsewhere is only the tip of the iceberg.
Fact: Since 1970, so-called “pensions” have been nothing but deferments of debt. The inability to meet obligations was met be raiding pension funds and placing government IOUs in the coffers instead. Now, finally, the day has come when the draw on those IOUs has surpassed the ability to meet it.
Fact: within 20 years, lots of things will happen. The ability to communicate and exchange value for goods services and labor will be so efficient and targeted that neither unions nor government will be able to keep up with the rate of innovation. They will both be obsolete. By the time the regulators hash through their political ‘compromises’ and contentious hammering, We The People will have moved past whatever they were trying to control. Unions were good when folks worked in the same factory for 45 years. By the time the last Boomer retires, the average length of time in one position will be somewhere between 1 and 3 years, with contractors comprising at least 50% of what used to be called “white-collar” positions. Manufacturing will become small-scale, local and mostly robotic.
Result: Government-union jobs will eventually simply disappear. Not only will there will be no money for them, they will be no need, and no amount of protest, demonstration, rally or angry screaming will cause any to suddenly reappear. Today, some of us are union-represented, some of us are government-employed and some of us are both. But all of us are taxpayers, and when all of us are told that we have to ante up double what we were paying before so that some of us can hang on to our obsolete, useless and archaic positions, guess who loses?
It’s not a judgment call. It’s what’s going to happen. Nobody in politics currently has the testicles to stand up to the extortionists, so it will eventually have to come to a governor of 50 stepping out to single microphone and saying, “Sorry. We’re broke.” Two or three elections later, after everybody who’s tried to hike taxes to pay for yesterday’s news is booted out, the whole thing simply withers and dies.
So . . . scream now, get all pissed and call the other side a whole bunch of dirty, frat-boy epithets, but if you have half-a-brain in your noggin, you'll get off your complacent backsides and join the future.
+1 and more.
RocketSurgeon: I don’t see how (unionized or not) nurses, teachers, fire fighters, police, and some other professionals can be replaced in the way that you are suggesting. There needs to be a reasonable teacher-student ratio; a reasonable nurse-patient ratio; and a certain number of fire fighters and police for a population base. Yes?
Is there some part of your argument that I am misunderstanding?
Certain professions cannot be robotized. Certain jobs are subject to individualized care and attention, and adapting to rapidly changing needs/environment.
I just discovered this blog and was finding it quite interesting…until I saw this incredibly misplaced post. There has been so much valid rebuttal – on the politicking, the state of public sector employment, etc – that at first I didn’t feel the need to post my own. But my view on this subject is a bit different than anything else I’ve seen posted, so I hope my two cents can add something to the discussion.
My background is history, with a long-running interest in labor history in the United States and around the world. What makes American organized labor rather unique is how UN-political it has been for most of its history. In Europe, organized labor didn’t support political parties, it created them as the political wing of a social movement. The British Labor Party, the German Social Democrats, the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalists; all were the political wing of a union movement. In America, things were the other way around: the Democratic Party took organized labor under its wings in the 1930s and bound the unions to the party’s political goals. Organized labor became the servant of American liberalism, not the force behind it that it was in much of the world. Someone above mentioned the “Treaty of Detroit” – that such a document could be called, meaningfully, a “Treaty” reflects the level of governmental power behind it.
Why does this matter? I’m hardly original in calling American unions “Big Labor” (contra “Big Business”), but the Big Labor mentality has everything to do with the sad state of American organized labor. Big Labor acts like Big Business, maximizing its own profits at the expense of employers. This mentality is why, as several people have pointed out, much union bargaining today is over seemingly petty topics that don’t effect the quality of the product. Unions as Big Labor need to maintain the status quo just as much as Big Business does. Tension between the two is real, but trivial.
It may sound like I’m anti-union, but that’s far from the case. In fact, I believe we need unions now as much as we have at any time in the nation’s history. However, to be relevant, unions need to take-up once again the mantle of social change that they dropped in the 1930s. Do you know why Roosevelt acted to protect and institutionalize organized labor withing the confines of the moderate AFL-CIO? It was to eliminate the influence of Communists, who led many of the union drives at the time (see Gastonia, NC, 1935). It was to prevent the re-emergence of the IWW, the legendary Wobblies. It was to end the wildcats and sit-down strikes – does the name Fisher Body Plant ring a bell to anyone? Probably not, as institutionalizing organized labor also meant controlling its story. The bad old days could be memorialized and turned into part of the American narrative (Pullman, Homestead – the great stikes of the 1890s), while more recent events (Lawrence -1912, Ludlow Massacre – 1913, the great steel strike of 1919, etc) could be written out of the narrative. They weren’t needed; labor peace had been guaranteed for the future.
It was a great story, and one that people wanted to hear. In fact, people still want to hear it: Since labor peace is settled, why are unions even needed? What role do they play, can they play? The answer comes not from this country, but from Egypt: I saw photos the other day of an Egyptian protester bearing a sign saying “We Support the Teachers in Wisconsin.” There is a word for this: solidarity, making common cause across trades, industries, states, and, yes, borders as common people (the working and middle classes) who have common interests and need each other to make sure that those interests are met. I was reduced to tears by those photos. That impoverished people in the midst of revolution see that they have a common cause with those in the most affluent nation in the world says more than any words I can write about the role of organized labor. There are working stiffs everywhere, and they all need to support one another.
That’s why we need unions now. They have been among the great agents of change globally, and can continue to do so. I’m in Generation Y, and I, for one, am NOT thrilled by the prospect of unstable employment and the resulting unstable life. Penelope might be right that we are a hopeful and mobile generation, but that doesn’t mean that we all share her disinterest in a stable and happy life. The goal of unionization has always been just that: ensuring that all the members of the union have the means to live a good life, and to push for a society built on the same grounds, even in the midst of vast socio-economic changes.
What I’m getting out of this is that we should expect to have 12-16 hour workdays, 6 day workweeks with no benefits other than lots of money with no time to spend it or go to the doctor. Maybe. No unions? Hello, 19th century. Again.
What I’m getting out of this is that we should expect to have 12-16 hour workdays, 6 day workweeks with no benefits other than lots of money with no time to spend it or go to the doctor. Maybe. No unions? Hello, 19th century. Again. Oh. And a shortened lifespan from working with no time off or time to visit the doctor.
Oh, and it’s not as if we were given a choice about Social Security withholding. 35 years and you want to tell me “Oh well?” Change with the times?
Thanks, P. Love you.
Maybe you are just trying to get more hits on your site with this madness, P. Trying to get more people to respond to the chaos going on in Madison. I really hope so.
Unions ARE still necessary, especially for the likes of public employees because we don’t make enough money as it is (I work for the Judicial Branch)for the amount of work we do for an understaffed sector, raises have been long gone since years ago, and benefits are dwindling more and more with budget cuts as it is. If the public sector employees don’t have any rights to speak out about issues (not only about the quality of their workplace, but the quality of the services they are able to provide, like the way education is imparted to our children – YOUR children?), then we are letting some outsider who has no clue of day to day goings on call the shots. You really want some clown who is more influenced by how little spending goes on to make calls on how your children’s school is ran? I’d much rather have the teachers and administrators who are actually working everyday IN that sector to have a voice on how things are carried out, what problems REALLY need to be dealt with, not just some guy who only looks at dollars and cents.
We are putting too high of a value on money over the quality of life. I have worked both private sector AND public sector, and I choose to stay in the public sector because the private sector is too damn shakey and “at will” termination is ridiculous – you can be fired for little or nothing and have no recourse for it. In public sector, you at least get some investigating done. If someone wants you out without validity, they’d have to do a damn good job of making things look bad for you. Private sector people fire you because they just don’t like you and call it “didn’t work well with the team”, which could mean subconsciously that they aren’t attracted to Muslim people or lesbians or whatever they found out about you that didn’t sit well. It DOES happen too often in private sector and I wish there were more unions to protect people from that garbage. I sure as hell don’t work for the public sector because the pay is so amazing and I get a few extra holidays. Let me tell you, sweetie, public sector employees have to work DAMN hard because there aren’t enough of us, no one respects us, and the opportunities to really make money aren’t there. But we have a sense of community with one another that is unparalleled in the private sector. Our bargaining rights is the one thing private sector employees DO have that keeps them going. Taking away their ability to have a say-so in how their workplace conducts business is nothing but wrong, it perpetuates hierarchy rather than equality and there is NOTHING good that is going to come from that. Those big CEOs and executives on top need to stop hogging all the money and start paying out what they’ve been robbing from everyone else. But cutting the little bit these middle classmen have so some fat cat can have an extra pile of money to sit on? How do you possibly concede to that?
Hey, somethings gotta give. All of us do. All of us will. We are staring at the end of the world as we knew it. The life we lived and led, the structured finance guy, the teacher, the government workers…This is about a new era…re-inventing yourself and your career. We are a culture of people who are used to “having jobs”. We are all going to have to re jigger the sails because the winds of change are blowing. A dictator can be overthrown by facebook. The good people of Wisconson feel strongly enough about “collective bargaining” to protest.
The politicians are all still playing the get back at you games. I’m sick of this. The president asks a panel to come up with some ideas about how to reduce the deficit and create a balanced budget. These guys couldn’t agree and come to a conclusion. Would someone please tell them that an iceberg just ripped a hole in the hull about 50 feet below the water line and we are taking on water fast. I guess they are too busy trying to see who gets to sit next to each other at dinner. Will they notice before their feet get wet?
Where is our Facebook revolution?
I think unions are useful in protecting employees from management. If management is allowed to operate without any checks and balances they will abuse their power and get rid of competent employees just to save money. That is not right. People have families to support. They are humans like everybody else. A union can prevent a competent employee from getting fired without cause.
Get a life… and stand up and fight for democracy…
I got a gift for you… your fired.
With benefits the average teacher in Wisconsin gets $89,000 the average private sector worker, who pays for the npublic sector retirement, health care etc. gets $61,000 again with benefits. The private sector worker cannot retire at 55, my full retirment age is 66 2/3 for example but teachers retire at 55. The teacher which 100 fewer days per year than the private sector worker. I can go on and on but the bottom line is public sector workers, teachers in this example, do have a better deal than we can afford to give them and a far better deal than private sector. Adjusting to a reasonable compensation plan is saving the teaching profession. Refusing to adjust and firing young teachers (becasue of tenure) will kill the profession. Stop lisening to the Democrats and Republicans and just think for yourself then you will see this is a financial issue not a human rights issue.
“Instead of lamenting that your job is changing for the worst, find out what new jobs are emerging because of the change, and make a change yourself.”
Right, because we’ll all be better off if there are no teachers. ;/
Interesting – but fact checking and a bit of current event study seem in order. Wisconsin’s schools are the SECOND best performing in the country. No longer need unions – a bill has been introduced in Missouri to abolish existing child labor laws. It’s interesting how everyone but the racers understand the race to the bottom
My fellow architects marvel at the gilded life of the public-sector employee – w/typical wages rates, benefits, pensions, work-rules, health care plans, etc which ALL exceed comparable private-sector job-description positions when compared “apples to apples”. Then add the pervasive public sector “perks” of “don’t be working that hard” and “don’t you be disrespecting me” expectations for those employees (at least here in Chicago). Those public-sector employees, teachers included, have no clue how exceptionally good their “employment-package” situations remains, and the namby-pamby complaints are falling on deaf ears of tax-payers.
Read recently in NYT: “Public-sector employees don’t need unions, because their employment situations don’t involve adverse employers seeking to exploit them. Tax-payers are the employers. The public-sector unions are negotiating with career public-sector administrators and politicians who have NO interest (heretofore) in prudent financial management and thus provided financial appeasement to the public-sectors unions. Public-sector union “negotiations” have long been a joke, given mandatory wage increases based on formulas and not performance or budget constraints, expectations of annual raises, zero tolerance for significant employee contributions to health insurance and pensions, little job-performance quality control. Illinois and Wisconsin, and most other states, many other cities and towns, face serious financial crises. At least Wisconsin’s governor is willing to face the angry mob of state employees; Illinois’ governor wants to float another monster bond to fund the budget gap in addition to raising effective income taxes by 70% (in addition to our 10.25% sales tax here in Cook County).
Go Penelope!
Apples to apples public sector employees make 20% less adjust for benefits and it is 7% less.
Those numbers are skewed because among employees with less than a college degree, public sector have surpassed their private sector counter-parts. The gap is created by those with a college degree or more.
As further comment, I’ve pasted an excerpt from the excellent education blog http://www.illinoisloop.org:
The 100 highest-paid school administrators in Illinois in 2006 had salaries ranging from $205,590 to $380,227. Here are the 17 who made more than a quarter million dollars for the year:
Superintendents’
Quarter-Million Dollar Club
Administrator Salary District
Catalani Gary T $380,227 CUSD 200
Bangser Henry S $356,500 NEW TRIER TWP HSD 203
Curley Mary M $321,149 HINSDALE CCSD 181
Kelly Dennis G $317,226 LYONS TWP HSD 204
Marks Linda R $316,874 GOLF ESD 67
Kanold Timothy D $292,938 ADLAI E STEVENSON HSD 125
Codell Neil C $286,208 NILES TWP CHSD 219
Bultinck Howard J $285,137 SUNSET RIDGE SD 29
Hager Maureen L $279,767 NORTH SHORE SD 112
Murray Laura L $279,397 HOMEWOOD FLOSSMOOR CHSD 233
Burns Kevin G $277,927 CHSD 218
Torchedlo Thomas A $266,478 WHEELING CCSD 21
Van Der Bogert Rebecca $265,922 WINNETKA SD 36
Radakovich Michael L $261,451 AURORA EAST USD 131
Fleming Larry K $259,878 LINCOLNSHIRE-PRAIRIEVIEW SD 103
Alson Allan L $258,876 EVANSTON TWP HSD 202
Wolf Boyce J $256,380 ROCK FALLS TWP HSD 301
Click here for FTN’s list of the highest-paid administrators in Illinois.
Wow .. I really don’t agree witth you at all about this.
According to Professor Harley Shaiken of the University of California-Berkeley,[1] unions are associated with higher productivity, lower employee turnover, improved workplace communication, and a better-trained workforce.
Prof. Shaiken is not alone. There is a substantial amount of academic literature on the following benefits of unions and unionization to employers and the economy:
Economic Growth
Productivity
Competitiveness
Product or service delivery and quality
Training
Turnover
Solvency of the firm
Workplace health and safety
Economic development
More: http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/why/uniondifference/uniondiff8.cfm
In your introduction, you say “but the issue in Wisconsin is more fundamental than pro-labor or anti-labor.” And then your first sentence of your talking points is “we don’t need unions anymore.”
There’s nothing else I need to say about this post.
This post, coming less than a week after your “argument for paying moms less,” made me so mad I had to wait a week to post here. And this is coming from someone who generally likes your ideas and reads your blog voluntarily.
Seriously? “HEY POT!” “HEY KETTLE!” “I brought beer!” It’s a hypocrisy party in here. No one argues for fighting for your right to work towards a flexible schedule, get some say in what you do and how you do it, etc. like you do. This is what unions do for teachers in a field controlled by officials who really do see all teachers as interchangeable widgets.
I know you sometimes have issues with
So let’s your points, shall we?
“1. Recognize when you're in a dead sector, and shift.”
What is DEAD about teaching? You have children, don’t you? Your neighbors have children, some of your friends have children…? Not every parent can or should home-school their children, so public school it is. I went into teaching because I liked it, but also because two other private sector jobs had just disappeared in 5 years- not just my job, but the entire industries I was working in. But in subbing, I discovered I actually like working with unpredictable little kids and pre-teens over adults every day.
For that matter, there is nothing dead about janitors or street sweepers or any other workers, you still generate trash and you hired a house manager to keep it under control.
“2. Create stability for yourself with new career tools.”
Many people are TRAPPED in teaching. The pension is a trade-off for poor pay while working on the job. And it is poor pay, if teachers were paid according to the level of education that is required of them, plus ongoing professional development, etc. they would get paid like doctors and lawyers. The public would pay teachers nothing if they could.
But here’s the thing… you can pay into SS, or into the state employee’s retirement system. And at retirement age, you can collect EITHER, but not both. So if you work half your life as a teacher, and half for a private company doing whatever you do… you can collect retirement for one or the other, which means, you have HALF the retirement available to you for the same number of years of work as your peers. I am not making an argument for or against the pension system, I’m just saying that teachers ARE doing everything they can to better themselves in their profession, but if you jump ship and leave teaching, you could have nothing at retirement. This is also why people who might be great at teaching but are doing something else stay away. You work for low pay as a teacher in exchange for a pension (and in CA, they pay into it just like other employees pay into a 401k), and if you don’t get either…. then you shoot yourself in the foot in the end… is that worth it for kids?
“3. Stop focusing on the meta. Just fix your life.”
How is this relevant to anything that is going on right now? Unless you are saying all teachers should just quit and go do something else and abandon all students. Teachers aren’t necessarily unhappy with their profession, they take the education of today’s students and tomorrow’s workforce very seriously. They are unhappy with their pay, with their working conditions, and with the continuous perception of the media that they are widgets and failures when they can’t solve every ill.
“4. Stop picking jobs based on long-term benefits.”
When teachers are paid a competitive wage for their level of education and experience, other benefits may not be so important. Given what they work for everywhere, the fact that they don’t qualify for a condo loan in most communities where they work, what exactly do you- a person with some power to make people listen- going to do about the issue of the underpaid state workers like teachers? Are you going to offer them a 30K a year raise each to match the private sector in exchange for that reduction in pension benefits when they retire? I thought not.
“5. Getting fired is a gift.”
Getting fired is a gift if you hate your job. If you love your job, if you devote countless unpaid hours to your job, and if getting laid off means the loss of your retirement, not just your employment, there is no GIFT in that. I’ve lost a few jobs in my career after college. When I lost my job as a music teacher due to budget cuts, it was no gift to me, and no gift to the 700+ student the age of your boys that no longer get music instruction of any kind at school.
Has it occurred to you that the reason Wisconsin schools fare poorly is not because the teachers suck, but because all aspects of the educational system are vastly underfunded, in particular, IDEA and IDA mandates that provide for all students individual needs, including Aspergers? No, you probably haven’t, and neither has anyone else. The public schools in this country have been underfunded so long that there really isn’t anything left to cut.
“6. Change is exciting. It opens new doors.”
Teacher work hard now, and they pay into their retirement for later. They didn’t make this mess… in fact, until Scott Walker decided to create a bunch of tax cuts, Wisconsin didn’t even HAVE a problem meeting these obligations. Really, your whole post, when compared to the life you have lived, makes you come off as privileged indeed, and unable to relate to someone like me. Makes it harder to take your career advice now. Stick to what you know- private industry- ok?
Hi Penelope-I’ve been a big fan and have appreciated your thoughtful, honest posts throughout the years.
However…this one shows a lot of ignorance, lack of empathy and seems to primary benefit your business (and perhaps your ego).
I don’t believe that the problem is our workers & unions, as much as it is our government doing the bidding of its true electorate, i.e., big business.
Until there are more acts of peaceful civil disobedience, this won’t change. I applaud the protesters and will be calling Ian’s to place a pizza order today.
Getting fired is not a gift. I understand that society as a whole must pay the social cost when the economy shifts. But families being homeless, children being hungry, women dying of cancer because they have no health insurance… that’s not a gift. For smart, mobile people with good resources (money in the bank, good social skills, good health) – yeah, maybe it helps them get off their butts and pursue a new dream.
I live in Chicago, where folks are on welfare, kids are in gangs, and it’s not very common to have someone excel in school, go to college, and enter the middle class. Sure, they’re “bad” at interviewing. And they’re “bad” at a lot of stuff. Every day, they put on their Burger King uniform – or pick up their bucket and head off to clean houses – to bring home $8 an hour. They’re not worthless, throw-away people. We can’t all move to a farm and pet baby goats.
And in the case of Wisconsin – this governor has a history of “privatizing” public services and lining the pockets of the already rich. Be a little cynical about politics, would you, Penelope? You’re plenty cynical about everything else.
A union worker, a Tea Partier, and a CEO are sitting around a table with a plate of 12 cookies on it. The CEO takes 11 cookies, and then says to the Tea Partier, “Watch out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie.”
Penelope is the CEO.
Toasts half a cookie to Karen…
Unions were instrumental in ending horrendous legal and economic exploitation of workers that used to be commonplace. But with the advent of modern labor laws (and MUCH expanded government oversight of those laws), the need for collective bargaining is gone. Yes, it is scary to stand on your own, judged and compensated based on your contributions alone, but that is the only way to ensure that we have the most qualified person in the job. For my kids, I want the best teacher we can find in their classroom, not a bad teacher that we can’t fire because s/he happens to be in a union in with a bunch of other really great teachers. How can this be ensured under the current union regime?
An interesting way to look at unions — one that makes me think. Issues of unions need to be discussed and some if not many of the givens their members have taken for granted will need to be reconsidered in the changing economy. I don’t think the approach Walker is taking is doing anything towards advancing that and only forcing his face into the national spotlight.
I was surprised by your comment that there ‘are enough jobs’ in our current economy – in fact I found it all but impossible to believe considering the unemployment rate.
So I followed your link and was disappointed that it led to an article (by you!) that did nothing to prove your point. Do you have data to support what you are saying? I’d love to see it.
Last night on public television, I watched part of Triangle Fire, on the 100th anniversary of the strike and return to work of the shirtwaist workers in New York.
This is a story of 20,000 seamstresses striking for months to establish a union for its workers. Issues were pay, hours, and health and safety conditions in the garment district. At the end of the long job action, most workers won and the shops became union shops. (It took the patronage of a high-society woman to stop the police brutality on the picket lines and draw media sympathy to the marching female workers.)
All but Triangle became unionized. One month later, in March, a fire broke out, and all the workers on the 9th floor were trapped–the exit door was locked. A few of the 200-odd workers got out via the elevator before it became non-functional. The rest jumped into the elevator shaft or jumped from the window ledges or burned alive. I think the final death count was 150-some.
Police who had beaten these women when they were protesting and marching a few months earlier, were now sorting through the bodies, 3 deep, on the pavement, and taking them to the mass morgue for identification. Chilling.
The owners of Triangle got an insurance settlement and disappeared into obscurity. They were not convicted of anything illegal. Triangle was the ONLY shop where the workers did not succeed in establishing a union. Their bosses conceded wage and hours benefits, so the women returned to work; but the other issues were not remedied.
If you want to see Triangle Fire for yourself, it is available from PBS.
Brilliant post. I truly agree with you.
Create your own destiny !!
Other people have said it better than I can, but this is a mess of a post. Among several logical and factual errors, it equates not wanting to lose the right to bargain with not wanting to work hard, it misstates the governor’s position, it fails to acknowledge that unions already conceded wage benefits, and it falsely assumes that “someone will always pay you” when in fact, as the union-free Alabama and South Carolina can attest, “someone” will only ever pay the market rate, no matter how good you are, and lower wages for some results in lower wages for all.
You were unwise to post this. Your points are shallow, facile, and wrong.
I will continue to read this site, but Penelope *nearly* lost me here.
What angered us all here is something that I haven’t seen addressed yet in my skimming of the comments: This post reeks of the kind of self-justifying, disingenuous positive thinking that makes us cringe.
I recently read the book “Bright-Sided” by Barbara Ehrenreich, and, while it is slightly overly-negative in parts, it points out some essential truths. One of them is that much of the career-related advice out there comes not from successful people’s desire to help the less successful, but from successful people’s desire to justify their own successes while justifying others’ failures.
I do believe that collective bargaining rights are a privelege, but I also believe that Gov. Walker must be stopped because, if he wins this one, we will see MUCH worse changes that lower the status of America’s middle class while blaming them for problems that were caused by the rich. Penelope is correct that younger workers must learn from this and not count on future benefits, but she appears to be willfully ignorant of the bigger issues at hand. Penelope is skilled and hard-working but ALSO lucky.
People will go to great lengths to avoid facing how little of their lives are actually out of their control. At her best, Penelope is excellent at focusing on what we DO have control over, and what we can do to take advantage of that. But to say that the whole Wisconsin-union issue is just and that all those teachers need is to “adapt” and “market themselves” is just delusional. She might as well be preaching quantum physics while channeling Atlantean spirits.
I wrote that in haste and want to revise a few parts.
By “…while blaming them for problems that were caused by the rich,” I meant “…while MAKING THEM PAY for problems that were caused by the rich.”
By “the whole Wisconsin-union issue is just…” I meant “Governor Walker’s actions are just.”
I already posted this once, but I think it’s very important and educational so I’m going to post it again. It’s an interview with a successful businessman who saw the world changing, saw his current business declining, and did exactly what he needed to do in order to stay afloat.
His name is Bernie Madoff.
http://nymag.com/news/features/berniemadoff-2011-3/
I'm taking a chill pill to keep my head from exploding as I'm trying to digest Ms. Trunk's typical conservative talking point blather. The hubris and arrogance of her argument seems to know no bounds. One has to ask if her smoke and mirrors advice(i.e., creating a problem that she can fix or create a career out of advising others to create careers, brilliant BTW) is directed to the rank and file worker or upper level professionals or management. I hope to interject a sense of reality.
1. Recognize when you're in a dead sector, and shift.
A case for unions. They are democratic institutions; don't like the leadership vote them out, (much like politicians). Tell me how easy it for shareholders to vote out company officers. Unions have been responsible for the setting the benchmark on wages and incomes, thus keeping our country from slipping into a Dickens like society, (Please sir, may I have some more?). Unions keep the middle class strong. Without the middle class there is no wealth to a nation, just haves and have nots. Instead of putting your energy into "reacting to a shifting job market" why not put time and effort into supporting changes to arcane trade policy of Nafta, Cafta and the WTO, (see Ross Perot – giant sucking sound' http://www.google.com/url?url=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DRkgx1C_S6ls&rct=j&sa=X&ei=oO5zTZuOB4yusAObsI3ICw&ved=0CDMQuAIwAg&q=giant+sucking+sound+%2B+ross+perot&usg=AFQjCNEXkCQ-bwYB1syEcXj3uGdJE8WoLw ). With more careers not ending up overseas, think of the increase in clients you would have. Win-Win. Until multi-nationals stop their hell-bent plan to drive wages to the bottom we will need unions.
2. Create stability for yourself with new career goals.
One reason there is a lack of stability in the workforce is your acceptance of multi-national globalization. A public company has to make a profit. It's their fiduciary responsibility. Thus companies are not loyal to the US, they are not patriotic and their involvement in the commons is nil unless they see a financial reason. It's all about the bottom line. Yet they want to privatize the profits but socialize the losses. So if they cannot get the wages down in this country they will do more with less with a reduced workforce. I ask again, where are your clients going to work? I get why you are pushing entrepreneurship, but consider this. If 26% of this countries students go on to secondary education and even less graduate with management training how do you expect the rest of the working force to become instant entrepreneurs? Unless your goal is the upper 15% of – professional' people in this country you career advice is falling on deaf ears, which goes back to my rank and file question, and thus the relevancy of unions.
3. Stop focusing on the meta. Just fix your life.
Here is where your hubris and arrogance really kick in. First of all, there ARE not enough jobs silly. Second of all, 5 people are chasing 1 job. Yet you find the time to insult the workforce that was laid off to no fault of their own. I can hear this crap on Rush Limbaugh, but I should not have to hear it from a career consoler. You're the one suggesting blame. Folks aren't blaming anyone they just want to work.
4. Stop picking jobs based on long term benefits.
Only if you're in upper level management or work for Wall St. I f you don't fall into that category, sorry, you don't deserve a retirement. Fend for yourselves. Pensions are just delayed salary payment that the workers contribute to. Taxpayers do not, I repeat do not, contribute to pension funds. We as a public buy the services of school teachers, fireman, and police officers and yes DMV workers and they contribute to their pensions. BTW, pensioners reduce the load on Social Security because they get a pension instead of Social Security. – Reneging' on these payments is tantamount to theft. Not only is the state pension fund in Wisconsin 98% funded, it was never the source of deficit shortfalls. So Walker wants to steal the pension fund to balance a budget that was not in trouble until he came to office – . Nice!
5. Getting fired is a gift.
I don't know what planet you're from, but that twisted logic is – well – twisted. Enough said. Wow!
6. Change is exciting. It opens new doors.
There you go again with the blame thing. I will agree change can be exciting, but if you are worried about putting food on the table or paying rent/mortgage one would probably go for the stability of a boring job. Where are all the jobs Republicans are talking about creating. Every time we turn around they are talking about laying off workers or creating a very tough environment for hiring.
I don't know where the seed capital is going to come from for all these entrepreneurs you are talking about. I own my own firm and I cannot get a loan. (Incidentally my name is Ian; no affiliation to Ian's Pizza). I just don't know why conservatives keep beating a dead horse in a winner take all, race to the bottom in wages society. As hard as it is to realize, most of you will not reach the upper 3% of the wealthy. Thus the definition of 3%. My advice – quit voting and supporting ideas against your best interests, and join or form a union.
Wow. It is amazing how many issues seem to be conflated in this post.
1. What is going on in Wisconsin is unique in many ways. More than a little of it is bare knuckled politics searching for some sort of moral justification.
2. Although it has been stated, Public Employee Unions are fundamentally different than private sector unions.
3. Unfunded and unaccounted for public employee benefits are a problem that needs to be addressed irrespective of one’s feelings about unions. First, it would help immensely if we got the accounting right. 3 or 4 trillion is a lot of money, but it can be solved over a period of years with the implementation of directionally correct policies and procedures.
4 The issue of unfunded long term benefits for public employees will be settled one way or another. I would suggest that the private sector approach of shifting to defined contribution plans for new employees, with a transition for current workers makes sense.
5. Alternatives that include union busting or a bankruptcy like solution to the benefit problem seem like worse options. However, economics will dictate a solution.
6. A huge chunk of the problem involves health benefits. This can and must be addressed on a national level for everyone. That is, the real long term liability problem is unfunded health costs, and the only solution is reform/restructuring of our ultra expensive health care system.
7. Industrial unions — like Steel — were busted by the economics of the business and couldn’t be saved by the political process. The Bethlehem Steel Plant @ Sparrows Point — at one time, the largest in the US is now owned by the Russian steel maker, Severstal. Stalin would turn over in his grave. This was only after BS was wiped out in bankruptcy as well as its Union benefits.
8. Public sector employees are not immune from the same underlying forces as the once mighty Steel unions.
when the state workers have less money they won’t eat lunch at Ian’s. bye bye Ian’s. it’s every man for him self said the elephant. as he danced amongst the chickens.
A very small point, but the demographics in France are much, much better than the demographics in Japan, Italy, or Germany, and closer to the countries in the Middle East than the (non-Nordic) countries of Europe, by which I mean that the fertility rate in France is around replacement and has been for some time.
Hey Penelope! Just what we need! Another opinion about unions issued by a person who has never been in one. Good thing most teachers don’t have the attitude about their careers that you do, otherwise we’d all jump ship and then where will the future of our schools be? We refuse to abandon them because we care too much.
The fact is that unions do a lot of good things for public education and yes, your kids. Are they perfect? No. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist.
Read more:
http://appleadayproject.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/monday-mythbust-myth-1-unions-only-benefit-teachers/
I am shocked by the number of people who think that Penelope’s comments are political. I found her comments to be refreshing in that she didn’t mention democrats and republicans, liberals or conseratives, left or right but rather gave commen sense reasons regarding the state of our economy and why unions our out of date. Teachers work for tax payers not big corporations. Also there are at least five (and probably more) teachers or people who work for the school district who live in my neighborhood and I would really like to know why I have to pay for their retirment when I am required to contribute toward my own retirement and can barely afford to pay for my own. Also one person wrote that people in the private sector make more money than government employees. However when you factor in the benefits that governement employees are paid they make significantly more that those in the private sector. The fight in Wisconsin is not Corporate America against unions it is the tax payers against the unions. Also I believe the politicans in this country want us to be divided (Democrats vs Republicans) because it gives them more power. Most of us agree that we want our government to be fiscally responsibe and spend our tax dollars more wisely. We should all join forces to get this message across to our govermentm officals, democrat or republican.
Gretchen, you aren’t working with real facts.
There are multiple studies that look at the issue of total public sector compensation (pay + benefits).
To find public sector compensation is greater than private you have to compare all private sector to all public sector without accounting for the differences in jobs. Government offers few jobs sweeping floors or pushing a button with the picture of what you wish to purchase.
Government is the largest employer of doctors, lawyers, engineers and scientists. When you compare based on comporable qualifications required government pays 20% less than the private sector in the professional fields (and even then is skewed because many government positions require multiple years of experience to be eligible to apply).
If you do across the board comparison job for job, the pay differential is 7% because the public sector does pay those with no degree required more than similar private sector positions (as much as you can compare a police officer or fire fighter to private sector).
The conservative Heritage Foundation has pointed out this differential and opposes across the board pay freezes because they recognize that low compensation is an issue in the professional fields.
The free market is already strongly at play. While Americans are snarling about over-paid teachers, the data shows that it is becoming harder and harder to attract college students into teaching. Numerous studies show that fewer top college students are going into teaching and more and more of the teaching ranks are being filled with students who are in the bottom third of their freshman class.
If we believe that the free market works in the labor market we have little choice but to look at who is entering the teacher labor pool and conclude that the pay and benefits are insufficient to attract not just top candidates, but insufficient to attract the median college student and those just below the median.
I know two high level government lawyers who walked away from $165,000 a year jobs because the pay was so far below their private sector choices. I asked the two doctors in my family why they didn’t consider jobs with the VA and they laughed and said they would make more in 10 years of private practice than working to retirement in the VA system. One of them calls the VA the place for doctors for whom English is an occasional language.
This is the reality of the system. Yes the public sector is paying non-college educated low experience workers more than the private sector but we are developing a real crisis in who we can attract to educate our children, design our bridges, care for our veterans and defend challenges to our laws.
Unions today need major reform (I speak of teacher unions of which I am a part of.) However, I do not agree with extinguishing them altogether because they can be tools to balance the misuse of power and guide uninformed politicians in the right direction to make education more equitable for all (We are still far from reaching that goal). Yes, unions served a different purpose in the past and many changes have occurred in the labor conditions that do not necessitate their continuous involvement today. However, better working conditions still do not exist for everyone. There are places across the country that have dilapidated and run down schools that are less than ideal for learning and working. I think the focus of teacher unions needs to return to ensuring that ALL schools in America are safe for students and staff before thinking of raising anyone's salaries. Yes, there are teachers out there who work other jobs besides teaching because their paychecks aren’t sufficient to make ends meet. That also isn’t fair when compared to all the demands that are placed on teachers today to raise student scores. I believe a teacher should only have one job ( If any teacher isn’t taking work home with them at the end of the teacher work day then they are probably mediocre or really know what they are doing). In summary, education still needs major reform and ideally unions should represent the voice of educators to reach a more logical goal than 100% proficiency for all. We live in a country where freedom is an illusion and taking away union rights only brings us "Scarily" closer to reality. If your blog or website were to be shut down or restricted in what you could post on it would that offend you?
@ mysticaltyger:
Bingo! I have heard this phrased almost exactly the same from someone who lived in Denmark and in Greenland. I think that is also a value in some Asian societies–that is, making the common good a priority as opposed to individualism as top priority.
And perhaps this belief in individualism is more influential than we know. Maybe more influential in the current struggle than liberal v conservative; and more influential than Democratic v Republican.
I also think that such fierce individualism has led to the ruthless competitiveness and the incivility. It has led to deep feelings of entitlement in many if not all sectors. It has led to acting like spoiled children: what’s mine is mine!! Both the Dems and Republicans, the conservatives and liberals, and in this case the unions AND the Republican majority, behave this way.
Wow, I don’t know where to begin on this one. It is of a piece with the theory that employees will control their careers and will job-hop as opportunities arise, and employers will pursue these valuable people with attractive offers. It may at one time have applied to a few highly qualified specialists, but it was always a fantasy with regard to rank-and-file workers in industry or government, and few if any employees of any kind have been in that kind of situation over the past two or three years. For those who are not in unions, and whose situation does not offer them the opportunity to play employers against each other–and that’s most of us–employers dictate the terms, and as businesses consolidate and monopolies grow, employees suffer the consequences. That’s just what we’ve seen over the past 30 years as unions weaken, wages stagnate, and benefits decrease. This is part of the “war on the middle class,” which is moving us to a society in which there are a few wealthy individuals and corporations that run things, a large number of poor who are struggling simply to keep their heads above water, and a tiny middle class. That type of society is called an oligarchy. You can read about it in Charles Dickens.
If unions have ceased to have a function, employees will refuse to join them or will vote them out. To try to legislate them out of existence on ideological grounds is just wrong. To claim that “unions wield insane powers” is, well, insane. Union membership has been decreasing for decades; partly because there are fewer manufacturing
jobs as automation and outsourcing dominate the economy (a problem in itself), partly because there are more professional and service employees who traditionally are not unionized, but also because of very successful union-busting.
Trunk can try to persuade people to look for different jobs that don’t offer security or benefits, telling them that their current jobs have no future, but that is an entirely different matter from trying to legislate less security and fewer benefits for existing jobs. She apparently believes that this will help move us more quickly towards the kind of economy she envisions. Not everybody believes that that transition is inevitable, or even desirable.
Referencing her own article that “there are enough jobs” is another fantasy. She cites no statistics, because she can’t; it’s just a blatant assertion, and it’s wrong. At this point there are four or five times as many people looking for jobs as there are job openings. I might also point out that another of her links, http://www.alternet.org/story/23533/,
doesn’t say that unions are unnecessary but that they need to be reinvented, which is certainly a tenable position.
Trunk seems to be a libertarian, which is fine, and she quotes her brother who got his economics PhD from the University of Chicago, home of Milton Friedman and the conservative Chicago School (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_school_of_economics), which is also fine, but don’t confuse these ideas with anything that has (or deserves) general acceptance. For a very different viewpoint from a Nobel-Prize-winning economist, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/opinion/21krugman.html
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Since when is being a teacher a dead end job with no future? This author had no idea what she was writing about. The protests in Wisconsin had to do with public sector employees including teachers. Are children supposed to teach themselves? Are teachers not to expect any benefits? Unions are not dead. They are vital to the working world and this article is stupid and pointless.
I love your blog. Then I came to this article/post where I have to disagree with you. Though change is exciting, I have to tell you that breaking up all unions would be redoing all the striking and protesting it took to get unions into the workplace all over if we get rid of them now or soon. Why? Because business takes advantage of every profit making ability it can. It’s the nature of business, money, and competition. I think the way workers and companies negotiate isn’t completely fair. Sometimes one or the other benefits. And, If you look at the distribution of wealth in the United States, you will find the majority of wealth is held by a very small percentage already. So is the goal of breaking up all the unions is to increase the ratio of wealthy people to the average of the other 99.9% of people — for the benefit of most people? To be in a union is a priveledge and the benefits unions obtain are often cushy. Though those benefits are proportional to the additional profits business enterprises take in. And where would business be without qualified workers? Sure union are known to protect unqualified people on occasion, but there can be remedies to that amenity of being unqualified and protected. I’m sure if all people didn’t have to worry about not having health insurance or a retirement income, there wouldn’t be people hanging on the jobs they hate and which they are unqualified for. Bootstraps is one thing, but the overall system is a dysfunctional mess created by proponents and advocates of both sides, pro-business and pro-worker, to draw out equity
or comfort .
It easy to say don’t be a lazy slob or get another job etc when you don’t have to worry about having healthcare, rent, mortgage, etc, especially because it’s our slavish work ethic. Just because you tell yourself I’ve pulled myself up by the bootstraps and look at me now, doesn’t mean that’s what actually happened.
I hadn’t read this blog in almost a year. I visited it today and this post came up. Then I remembered why I unsubscribed. It’s hard to take advice seriously when the person who dispenses it seems to have such a reactionary, Hobbesian worldview at heart.
Maybe Hobbesian’s not the right word. Hobbes was more of a cynic- not quite a fascist. Penelope doesn’t say it, but she implies that her ideal world is one where top candidates compete for good jobs while being held up by an underclass of slaves.
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Penelope is absolutely spot on here. The chorus of “cancel my subscription” absolutely confirms it. Anytime you point to a really significant change there will be many people too threatened by it to even listen.
I’ve spent my afternoon reading the posts about the Farmer, and somehow I got to this post. I am so impressed with you for the stand you took about the greed of the unions. The grief you got from your (apparently, almost 90% leftist) readership, was telling! I fear for the level of ignorance in which Americans are living. And the fact that pizza’s are being bought from abroad to feed the protesters should be a wake up call that the world wants to see the great US fail, and that desire is being financed by organizations linked to Soros, et. al. Check out “discoverthenetworks.org” for some insight on how a well networked movement is trying to pick apart our society, in a million different little ways. Stick to your guns! You said the right thing.