Jump through anyway
“Flag to the Abyss” (detail), by Sarah Stefana Smith, in her show “Willful Matters,’’ at Burlington (Vt.) City Arts through May 6.
—Photo courtesy Burlington City Arts.
Battery Park, which overlooks the Burlington waterfront and Lake Champlain
— Photo by Tania Dey
‘Elegies to the once useful’
“Heavy Light” (pewter candlestick, aluminum cannister, plaster wrap, acrylic paint, Sculptamold, joint compound, Aqua-Resin), by Boston artist Laura Evans, at Boston Sculptors Gallery, through May 7.
She says:
“My sculptures hover between mundane, recognizable objects and mysterious abstracted forms that reference the body’s fragility and tenuousness. My recent work combines common household items, found objects and hand-built forms. Some have handles and imply function, but these are elegies to and celebrations of once useful, but discarded objects, subject to the effects of time. Humor and gravity, weight and levity, amusement and confusion, often coexist in my sculptures. I directly manipulate my materials, using simple hand tools, which allows me to create intimate and closely observed surfaces and forms that have life.’’
Llewellyn King: Biden needs to recognize the perils of old age
Stained glass window of Methuselah in the southwest transept of Canterbury Cathedral, in Kent, England. He was said in the Bible to have reached the age of 969, making him the oldest person in the Good Book.
Read about The New England Centenarian Study.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
The case for Joe Biden to accept the inevitable dictates of his age and not run again is persuasive. Too much rests on the health and fitness of the president to turn it into a kind of roulette: When will his number come up?
Worse, what if Biden fails mentally and stays in office incognizant of his condition? Being the president of the United States is the most demanding and most responsible job in the world.
Winston Churchill got a second term as prime minister of Great Britain in 1951, and lots of stuff went wrong, from immigration policy to the growth of unchecked union power. History’s greatest prime minister had lost his acuity.
As I am older than Biden, I can say that he should quit. I love to work, but there’s the rub: Not all people and all work are created equally. What I do isn’t critical and doesn’t decide the nation’s future or war and peace.
No one would suggest that an artist toss the easel at a predetermined retirement age. Noel Coward, the great English entertainer, said, “Work is more fun than fun.” That depends on the work.
Age is a complex equation for society, and retirement is a nettlesome problem. France is in revolt over President Emmanuel Macron’s move to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62. Very reasonable, most Americans say.
The issue in France is simple: The French can’t afford huge state pensions any longer. There aren’t enough people at work to pay for those who have retired on their nearly full salaries. You can vote the population rich, but you can’t vote in new, young taxpayers to keep them rich. When the Social Security System falters in the next decade, America may be staring at the same sums as Macron.
Mandatory retirement is a crude way to manage the retirement dilemma. Some workers are genuinely unable to work into their 70s and 80s because their bodies, their minds or both are worn out. Others are at their most productive.
My father’s mind was fine, but he was a mechanic who had done everything from building steel structures to working in mines to repairing cars. His body failed around the age of 6o. He had been doing manual work since he was 13 but at 60 he couldn’t bend, twist, delve, lift, climb, stretch, grab or do many of the myriad things he had done all his life to earn a living. He had to work in a school and then a shop; he loved the school but not the shop. But he had to work. That is what he did: He got up every day and went to work.
He had worked so long and so hard, primarily self-employed, that he hadn’t had time to learn leisure — to play golf, to watch ballgames, to read for recreation, or even to learn how to socialize. That came with work or didn’t happen; friends were people at work.
A friend of mine, a nuclear engineer, reached mandatory retirement age and fell apart, much as my father nearly did. He, too, had no interests outside of his family and work and was lost in the post-job world.
Something of this same problem exists for people leaving the military. Their life is the military, and then, at an early age, there is no more of that life, their life.
When it comes to Biden, things are quite different.
I know the president slightly, and I like him. He loves the job. He has been at or near the peak of power for a long time. When his term ends, on Jan. 20, 2025, he should adjourn to his beach house in Delaware and write his memoirs.
Maybe someone will teach Biden how to play boules, a European form of bowls played by older people in parks. French boules aficionados would be happy to teach him the game. The French have a lot of time in retirement to perfect their play and travel to beach destinations. They would love to bring their skill to Rehoboth Beach, Del. Maybe I should join them.
On Twitter: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. He’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
White House Chronicle
InsideSources
How many will board these new and long-delayed trains?
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Will the return, after many decades, of passenger rail service between Boston, Fall River and New Bedford and intermediate spots late this year be a big boost to the long economically challenged old mill towns? Both Fall River and New Bedford are often lumped together, though they’re different in many ways, especially in that New Bedford is a big fishing port and the former whaling capital, as well as an arts center, and hilly Fall River is more physically dramatic.
Commuter service could enable some folks who otherwise would be stuck trying to find “affordable” housing in pricey Greater Boston to find much cheaper digs in those cities and, we hope, add new economic and other energy to urban parts of the South Coast in general. Could it even lure more than a few Boston area businesses to set up shop there?
The current MBTA plan for South Coast Rail calls for three morning peak commuting trains and three late-in-the day peak commuting trains to both New Bedford and Fall River. The trips from the cities to South Station in Boston are projected to take about 90 minutes, which could sometimes be faster than driving. The service will mean six morning and evening trains to Taunton and Middleboro; all the trains will make those stops. During off-peak periods, trains will run every 3 to 3½ hours.
Frequency, reliability and marketing are key to winning over enough drivers to mass transit. I’m not sure that the planned schedules would be frequent enough. Yes, taxpayers will heavily subsidize the service -- as they do the highways. The train service, if it’s promoted enough, might, over the years, gradually lighten traffic on those roads a bit.
Frank Carini: The staggering hypocrisy of the anti-offshore wind farm crowd
From Frank Carini’s column “Whale of a Tale: Local Anti-Wind Crowd Spins Yarns,’’ in ecoRI News (ecori.org)
”No energy source is benign. From installation to operation, they all come with consequences — environmental, societal, and cultural. Some more than others. Legitimate concerns (e.g., not infringing upon whale migration corridors) must be studied, discussed, mitigated, and/or avoided. Renewable energy shouldn’t be called clean, but it is a whole lot cleaner than fossil fuels….
“The concerns of southern New England’s anti-offshore wind crowd, however, never spill over to the polluting gas and oil platforms that mar many of the waters off the U.S. coast, especially in the Gulf of Mexico. Probably because there are no such rigs in Rhode Island Sound.
“They don’t mention sonar {which can disturb marine mammals} is used to detect leaks from offshore fossil fuel infrastructure. They fail to note ocean military training drills use sonar, and live munitions. They disregard the fact the primary causes of mortality and serious injury for many whales, most notably the North Atlantic right whale, are from entanglements with fishing gear and vessel strikes.
“Even though data show that North Atlantic right whale mortalities from fishing entanglements continue to occur at levels five times higher than the species can withstand, the anti-wind crowd isn’t calling for fishing gear to be pulled from local waters or the use of ropeless fishing technology made mandatory. They aren’t demanding vessels be equipped with technology that monitors the presence of whales in shipping lanes.
“They ignore the fact the development of offshore wind is the most scrutinized form of renewable energy. After reading this column, they will allege I and/or ecoRI News are in the pocket of Big Wind. We’re not. (A few wind energy companies have advertised with us, but they didn’t spend nearly enough to bankroll a golden parachute, or even a reporter’s salary for a month.)
“The anti-wind crowd doesn’t offer any real solutions to drastically reduce the amount of heat-trapping, polluting, and health-harming greenhouse gases that humans are relentlessly spewing into the atmosphere.’’
To read the full column, please hit this link.
Cheated again
"I am afraid the poor Indians will never stand a good chance with the English in their land controversies, because they are very poor, they have no money. Money is almighty now-a-days, and the Indians have no learning, no wit, no cunning: the English have all."
— Samson Occom (1723-1792), a member of the Mohegan tribe in Connecticut, \ was a minister, teacher and missionary who was instrumental in raising the money in London that ended up helping to found Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H. But the fundraising, to his surprise and dismay, was actually a kind of bait-and-switch operation.
In Columbia, Conn., the Moor’s Indian Charity School building, built in 1754 but later altered in Greek Revival style. The school was the predecessor of Dartmouth College.
‘Mystery unfolding before me’
On Lake Sunapee, N.H.
”Talismanic rosary in hand,
I watch the breath of morning rise.
Warm mists, drifting upward
from the cold waters of the deep lake,
ascend into heaven. New clouds,
baby clouds form, from water to air,
a mystery unfolding before me.’’
— From “Metanoia,’’ by Newbury, N.H.-based poet Dianalee Velie. Read the whole poem here. Newbury is on Lake Sunapee.
The Puritans didn’t like it but we moved on
On the Easter Bunny Express of the Railroad Museum of New England, in Thomaston, Conn.
From the New England Historical Society:
“Easter Sunday traditions in New England have long included dying eggs, wearing new clothes, baking hot cross buns and attending sunrise services. They are based on pagan superstitions, which of course is why the Puritans didn’t celebrate the holiday. (The Puritans didn’t like Christmas, either.) For the early Puritans, celebrating the Lord’s Day 52 times a year was quite enough.
“Others brought traditions from Europe. Germans believed, for example, that rabbits laid beautifully colored eggs on Easter.
“Franco-Americans rose before the sun came up to fetch water, which they called Peau de Paques (Easter skin) from a stream. They believed it had miraculous qualities, staying pure indefinitely. They washed with it, drank it and saved it.’’
Spring break: Should we fly or take the boat?
“Worldly Birds” (encaustic, collage), by Nancy Whitcomb
Depends on what you mean by 'Spring'
“Spring, in Maine, is not exactly a date on the calendar. It comes when it gets good and ready, and before we see any summer folks we’ll have another blizzard.’’
— John Gould (1908-2003), Maine-based humorist, essayist and columnist, in Old Hundredth
Chris Powell: Program for ex-cons in New Haven needs to include work as well as welfare
They could help clean up this.
New Haven from the south.
— Photo by Emilie Foyer
MANCHESTER, Conn.,
Being the source of all sorts of politically correct nuttiness even as its violent crime is atrocious and its schools don't work (because few of their students have competent parents), New Haven may be criticized for its new experiment with released prisoners. The city is awarding 20 of them a guaranteed income of $500 a month for a year to help them re-establish themselves on the right side of the law.
But the money is coming from a philanthropic grant, not from government, and only a big detail of the program is amiss, not the objective. Indeed, the objective is compelling. The program should be adjusted and implemented by state government throughout Connecticut.
With its largely impoverished, uneducated, unskilled, fatherless and welfare-dependent population, New Haven is a hub of crime, as Connecticut's other cities are. Every year the state prison system releases about 900 offenders back to the city as they complete their sentences. On average within three years about half of them are convicted of more crimes and sent back to prison. The true failure of rehabilitation in criminal justice is worse than that, since many released offenders commit more crimes but aren't caught.
That this "recidivism" has been so bad for so long does not make it any less of a disaster and excuse government's failure to do much about it. But this disaster is inevitable when uneducated, unskilled and demoralized men are returned to society without financial resources, a job, housing and medical insurance even as they carry the heavy handicap of a criminal record.
What's faulty about the experiment in New Haven is that the guaranteed income for the former prisoners is not linked to a guaranteed job, medical insurance and rudimentary housing. It's welfare when it should be work.
The Correction Department should be funded to provide much more job training to prisoners within two or three years of their likely release. But government should be able to find work even for the uneducated and unskilled.
For starters, Connecticut's roadsides, parks, railroad lines and other public areas are full of litter strewn about by slobs. A few dozen released prisoners could clean up a whole city in just a month and might feel pretty good about it if they were being paid, appreciated, and free of the fear of having no housing and medical insurance.
Connecticut's manufacturers are struggling to fill thousands of skilled positions and might provide internships and job-training to former prisoners who showed an interest. Hospitals might too. Churches, especially those in the cities, surely would assist a campaign to employ former prisoners.
With its guaranteed -income program New Haven has had its pick of the seemingly most rehabilitated and motivated former prisoners. Reintegrating other former prisoners will be much harder, and the public's reaction to former prisoners working visibly in public places, sometimes near children and the elderly, might not always be welcoming. So government will have to explain patiently why society must help former prisoners make something good of themselves. Many people will understand.
Of course there would be failures in such a program -- but not as many as there already are with released prisoners. Indeed, compared to the present disaster, the success of such a program would be virtually certain.
Then maybe state government could turn its attention to getting rid of its policies and practices that have turned the cities into poverty factories.
xxx
BRIDGEPORT FAILS AGAIN: Why has state government yet to see much progress from its longstanding policy of throwing ever-more money at Connecticut's impoverished cities and especially their schools?
There may have been a hint the other day from Bridgeport, where videographer Steve Ronin posted on the Internet a long video taken during his recent tour of the city's former Harding High School. Though the school was closed five years ago, it remains packed with valuable furnishings and equipment as if it is still operating.
The video shocked city officials. They thought that the school board had relocated the furnishings and equipment for continued use. But what should have been obvious wasn't done.
What's more shocking is that state officials still seem to consider Bridgeport capable of self-government.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Connecticut (CPowell@JournalInquirer.com).
Linda Gasparello: Painting in solidarity with Ukraine
“Ukraine Wheat and Sky,’’ by Lloyd Kelly.
When war, such as the one in Ukraine, breaks out, writers and artists are never impotent. Writers have the power of the pen and artists have the power of the brush.
Through the centuries to today, they have used their creative talents as war propagandists or protestors. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has inspired works in protest worldwide.
In Louisville, Ky., renowned artist Lloyd Kelly has painted in solidarity with Ukraine.
“When I saw Ukrainian children being bombed by the Russians, I felt I had to do something that shows support for the Ukrainian people,” Kelly said.
His picture titled “Ukraine Wheat and Sky” is small, but not its message.
From a distance, it depicts the flag of Ukraine. But moving closer, you can see what Kelly called “its tension and motion.”
“I underpainted it with complimentary colors — blue on orange and yellow on violet — to create a tension. And the diagonal lines [from the blue sky to the golden yellow wheat of the flag’s colors] show a motion, a fluidity, like the wind blowing the fabric of the flag,” he explained.
Kelly said that he didn’t want the flag to be sentimental — a dreamy, wispy image. “I underpainted it because I wanted it to be substantial.” A painting of solidarity.
He has felt so strongly about the suffering in Ukraine that he couldn’t sell it. “Selling it just didn’t feel right. So I gifted it to people who support Ukraine in a very concrete way.”
Kelly’s painting captures on canvas what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said so poignantly in a television interview with David Letterman, “This blue color is a color of life; a color of the sky, space and freedom. The flag doesn’t have any images of planes or missiles in the sky, any traces of gunshots.
“These two colors are the country of where I was born, the country we are fighting for.”
Kelly exhibits at The Christina Gallery, in Edgartown, Mass. His studio address is www.lloydkelly.com.
Linda Gasparello is co-host and producer of White House Chronicle, a weekly news and public affairs program that airs nationwide on PBS and elsewhere.
‘A spider at his trade again’
“American Homestead Spring’’
An altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;
An added strut in chanticleer;
A flower expected everywhere;
An axe shrill singing in the woods;
Fern-odors on untravelled roads, —
All this, and more I cannot tell,
A furtive look you know as well,
And Nicodemus' mystery
Receives its annual reply.
— “April,’’ by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), a poet whose imagination traveled widely in her home town, which she almost never left.
Amherst, most known for its colleges, in the year of Emily Dickinson’s death.
Mass. first in nation in Advanced Placement report
Edited from a report by the New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
“Massachusetts has once again ranked first in the nation with the highest percentage of graduating high school seniors who scored a 3 or higher on an Advanced Placement (AP) exam, according to results released by the College Board this week. Further, all six New England states rank in the top half of the nation’s AP results, with Connecticut standing out in the number four spot.
“Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey stated that she is ‘proud of the students and educators who worked hard to make sure Massachusetts remains a leader in student participation and success.’ Governor Healey went on to say that her administration ‘is committed to expanding access to AP courses for all students to enhance the opportunities available to them and set them on a path to a successful future.’
“Across the nation, only 21.6 percent of students scored a 3 or higher on their AP exams which are needed to pass. However, in Massachusetts alone, 30.5 percent of students had a passing score on their exams. Additional information on this recent New England success can be found here.’’
Hall of the Boston Latin School on Bedford Street, 1844–1881. Boston Latin, founded in 1635, is by far the oldest public school in the United States.
The ‘courage’ of a flea?
Mark Twain in Dublin, N.H., where he summered in 1905 and 1905. He loved that area.
He wrote: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!-Incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who ‘didn't know what fear was,’ we ought always to add the flea-and put him at the head of the procession.”
Can’t trust some photos
“Untitled” (gelatin silver print), by Hein Gravenhorst, in the group show “Seeing Is Not Believing: Ambiguity in Photography,’’ at the Currier Museum of Art, in Manchester, N.H.
The museum says:
“Many photographers play with ambiguities – creating images which question what is real. Perspective, lighting, and close-up details can radically distort the look of objects. These distortions can be both bewildering and delightful.
“This exhibition explores photographs that make us question what we are looking at. Still lifes, abstract images, and manipulated photographs heighten our sense of wonder. Can we ever trust what we see in a photograph?’’
Sonali Kolhatkar: Starbucks CEO Schultz -- union buster in chief
Starbucks workers protesting in Seattle, where the company is based.
—Photo by elliotstoller
Starbucks was named after Starbuck, the thoughtful Nantucket Quaker who was the first mate on the whaling ship Pequod in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
From OtherWords.org
Outgoing Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, in a recent interview with CNN, proudly showed off his newest invention: a tablespoon of olive oil added to a cup of coffee to bring out rich, complex flavors.
The conversation was meant to showcase Schultz’s commitment to Starbucks coffee as he prepared to step down as CEO of the company for the third time. But it took place in Italy, prompting his interviewer to ask: Why wasn’t Schultz sitting down with unionizing workers back home?
Indeed, Schultz — who is worth some $3.7 billion — has been operating as union-buster-in-chief of the iconic corporation.
Since the first group of Starbucks workers unionized a café in Buffalo in late 2021, more than 278 stores have done the same, according to Starbucks Workers United. Still, the number of unionized cafés remains a tiny fraction — about 3 percent — of all stores.
Early on, Schultz admitted to workers that the company had failed to give them the tools they needed, such as better staffing and training. But Schultz’s response was to create an uneven playing field and punish workers for daring to demand better conditions.
In 2022, Schultz reportedly rewarded nonunion workers with better wages and benefits, as well as credit card tipping, and denied the same to people working in union stores. As a result, the New York Times reported, “Filings for union elections dropped from more than 60 a month in March and April to under 10 in August.”
Meanwhile, the company is firing union leaders such as Starbucks worker Hannah Whitbeck in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her termination prompted a lawsuit and a federal judge’s decision that prohibited the Ann Arbor store from firing workers for union activity.
The company has also been understaffing stores that are unionizing, a move that the union says is a deliberate ploy to make workers’ lives more difficult. Schultz has even closed entire stores that have dared to take up union activity, including the first store in Seattle to unionize.
“This is just the beginning. There are going to be many more,” warned Schultz in July 2022.
As long as an employer can abuse workers, there is a need for unions. And union activity is surging, with a 50 percent increase in strike activity last year compared to the year before, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Shultz apparently sees himself as above the law. He refused to testify about his company’s 75 documented violations of federal labor laws in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, chaired by Senator Bernie Sanders, until Sanders forced him to with a subpoena.
But not every company is fighting its own workers tooth and nail. When Toyota workers in Japan asked for the largest pay hike in 20 years, the automaker agreed to all the union’s demands in the very first round of negotiations.
Toyota’s head Koji Sato said the move was intended as an example “for the industry as a whole.” It worked. Hours after Toyota’s announcement, Honda accepted its own union’s demands in full.
No so for Starbucks. Schultz has ruined the company’s reputation for caring about its workers and become the poster child, even in the business world, of what not to do when faced with union activity.
Starbucks should take a page out of Toyota’s book. In his CNN interview, even Schultz admitted that what Starbucks workers want more than anything is “a seat at the table.” He added, “It’s hard to walk in someone else’s shoes, but you’ve got to do that a little bit.”
Instead of experimenting with olive oil in coffee, he could try something else that’s new for him — treating workers with the same respect that he commands.
Sonali Kolhatkar is the host of Rising Up With Sonali, a television and radio show on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations.
Philip K. Howard: Public-employee unions, unlike trade unions, corrupt democracy
Chicago teachers marching during a demonstration on Oct. 14, 2019
Massachusetts state militia enter Boston’s Scollay Square (RIP) to restore order during the city’s police union strike in 1919, which was broken, in large part by the rigorous actions by Gov. (and later Vice President and then President) Calvin Coolidge. The strike left a negative opinion amongst many citizens about public-employee unions for many years. There was much crime and other disorder during the strike. Coolidge famously said during the strike:
“There is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, any time. ... I am equally determined to defend the sovereignty of Massachusetts and to maintain the authority and jurisdiction over her public officers where it has been placed by the Constitution and laws of her people."
In a runoff election for mayor, Chicago voters on April 4 narrowly chose former teacher Brandon Johnson over former schools CEO Paul Vallas. Raising eyebrows was the funding of Johnson’s campaign: Over 90 percent came from teachers unions and other public-employee unions. Vallas had the endorsement of the police union, but his funding was more diverse, including business leaders and industrial unions. Just looking at the money, the race came down to this: Public employees vs. everyone else plus cops.
What is wrong with this picture? The new mayor is supposed to manage Chicago for all the citizens, not to benefit public employees. Chicago is not in good shape. In 37 of its schools, not one student is proficient in reading or math. Its transit system is stuck with schedules that serve no one at great expense. The crime rate in Chicago is among the highest in the country. But no recent Chicago mayor has been able to fix these and other endemic problems because the public unions have collective bargaining powers that give them a veto on how the city is run. Frustrated by the inability to get teachers back to the classroom during COVID, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot observed that the teachers union wanted “to take over not only Chicago Public Schools, but take over running the city government.”
This is not just a Chicago problem. Los Angeles teachers walked out of class rooms last month supposedly to support striking service personnel, but Los Angeles lacks the resources to help the service employees because of the indebted inefficiencies in the teachers union contract.
American government has a fatal flaw hiding in plain sight. Public employee unions in most states have a stranglehold on public operations. Voters elect governors and mayors who have been disempowered from fixing lousy schools, firing rogue cops, or eliminating notorious inefficiencies.
Look at almost any public scandal in recent years—failing schools in Baltimore, police killings in Minneapolis and Memphis—and you will find public supervisors who, under union controls, have lost basic managerial tools. Democracy is supposed to be a process of accountability. But there’s near-zero accountability in American government—between .01 and .02 percent in most jurisdictions. Two out of 95,000 teachers in Illinois were dismissed annually for poor performance over an 18-year study period. In the decade prior to the killing of George Floyd, of the 2,600 police complaints in Minneapolis only 12 merited discipline, of which the most severe was a 40-hour suspension.
No wonder democracy is working so badly. Elected leaders come and go, but public unions just say no. How did public employee unions get this power?
Rewinding the Clock
Until the 1960s, public employees were organized like lawyers, doctors and other voluntary professional associations. They had no legal right to compel government to enter into contracts. Many already enjoyed civil service protections, and government work was generally sleepy, not ruthless. But public employees had become a huge voting bloc, and leaders of public employee associations wanted power over how government was run.
Until then, the idea of public employees bargaining against government was inconceivable. FDR, a strong supporter of trade unions, firmly rejected government bargaining: “The process of collective bargaining…cannot be transplanted into the public service.” Early labor leader Samuel Gompers refused to let police join the industrial union because, having sworn to serve the public, police would have a conflict of interest. As late as the 1950s, union leader George Meany stated unequivocally that it is “impossible to bargain collectively with the Government.”
But the strong tide of the 1960s rights revolution provided ample cover for government unions to get similar statutory powers as industrial unions. No one conceived back then that these powers would make government unmanageable. It was just considered a matter of “elementary justice” to treat them the same.
Government bargaining, however, is radically different from trade union bargaining:
A trade union must honor efficiency, or else the jobs are lost when the business moves out of town or fails. Government can’t go out of business or move, so public employee bargaining is aimed at creating deliberate inefficiencies to foster more jobs.Multi-hundred-page contracts that are designed for featherbedding and overtime excesses. Taxpayers must foot the bill.
Trade union bargaining is limited to dividing the pie of profit between capital and labor. There is no profit in government, so the scope of government bargaining has no defined limits. Again, the taxpayers must pay.
In trade union bargaining, it would be unlawful for management to collude with a complicit workers group. In government bargaining, overt collusion is how the game is played. In exchange for huge union campaign support, politicians agree to give unions control over public operations and pensions. As unions like to say, “we elect our own bosses.” At a rally with public unions, New Jersey’s then-Governor Jon Corzine called out that “We will fight for a fair contract!” Who was he going to fight? Collective bargaining with government unions is not a real negotiation. It’s a pay-off.
For fifty years, government union controls have gotten ever-tighter. Unlike all other interest groups, government unions have a binding contractual veto over how government operates, and are first in line for public resources. They keep it that way with preemptive political force. Stanford political scientist Terry Moe found that in 36 states teachers unions contributed more than all business groups combined.
The Disempowerment of Elected Executives
Newly-elected governors and mayors in most states quickly discover that they have no managerial control over schools, police, and other government operations. If an elected executive has the backbone to try to buck the union, and restore managerial powers when an agreement comes up for renegotiation, the executive in many states will find that unelected arbitrators have the final say.
Near-zero accountability makes its practically impossible to transform a lousy school, or an abusive police culture, because the supervisor can’t enforce good values and standards. No accountability also removes the mutual trust needed for any healthy organization. Why try hard, or go the extra mile, when others just go through the motions? The absence of accountability is like releasing a nerve gas into the agency or school.
Rigid work rules guarantee massive inefficiency. Basic services such as trash collection, and road and transit maintenance, cost two to three times what it would cost in the private sector. Need someone to help out or fill in? Sorry, not permitted. Need teachers to do remote teaching during the pandemic? There’s nothing about that in the agreement, so it must be negotiated.
No public purpose is served by union controls. Nor do union controls make government an attractive employer. Good candidates are repelled by toxic public cultures without energy or pride. Union controls serve only to transfer governing authority to union officials, who exercise that authority mainly to pad public employment and insulate government workers from supervisory judgments.
Public unions have turned public operations into a permanent spoils system: Unions have control over public operations and have insulated public employees from accountability, no matter how poorly they perform. That’s why democratically-elected leaders almost never fix what’s broken.\
All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters. Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.
Philip K. Howard, a New York-based lawyer, writer and civic leader, is author most recently of Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions (Rodin Books, 2023). He is chairman of Common Good (commongood.org), a legal-and-regulatory-reform organization.
Read here Franklin Roosevelt’s views on public-employee unions.
‘Drive the white folks crazy’
Gingerbread Cottages at Wesleyan Grove, in Oak Bluffs.
— Photo by LisaHendricks
“We were always stared at. Whenever we went outside the neighborhood that knew us, we were inspected like specimens under glass. My mother prepared us. As she marched us down our front stairs, she would say what our smiles were on tiptoe to hear, ‘Come on, children, let’s go out and drive the white folks crazy.”’
— From African-American writer Dorothy West’s (1907-1998) book The Richer, the Poorer (1995). Here, she’s remembering summering in Oak Bluffs, on Martha’s Vineyard.
New joys
“Release” (charcoal and pastel), by Lesley Cohen, in her show “Light Matters,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, through April 30.
The gallery says:
“This series of drawings serve as a metaphor for the new possibilities of joy that can be received as we re-enter and re-engage with the world outside. The world is generously reopening its magical portal for us in shimmering waves that surprise and delight. The inspirational effects can be almost breathtaking and we can rejoice in finally being able to attend. And as we reemerge, the light enters. We have plenty to celebrate. Let the magic begin.’’