Source: Catherine Rampell, New York Times Economix Blog, March 1, 2010
State and local government workers are much more likely to get hurt on the job than private sector workers, according to a new report from the Labor Department.
Among workers in the private sector, there were 113 nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses per 10,000 full-time workers in 2008. In state and local government, the incidence rate was 170 cases and 195 cases per 10,000 employees, respectively.
Source: John Buntin, Governing, March 2010
Critics say it's time for cities and states to get tough with public-sector unions. They may be right -- for all the wrong reasons.
From the abstract:
The article focuses on privacy issues in the public sector. It explains that the right of privacy involves boundary lines, how notions of privacy have changed over time-particularly after September 11th, focuses on the constitutional right of privacy, workplace searches and surveillance, Electronic Communications Privacy Act, surveillance and labor relations issues, Sunshine laws and public employee statutory rights, the right to union representation at investigatory interviews, gay marriages and concludes that many of the boundary lines concerning the right of privacy in the public as well as the private sector can be negotiated by employers and unions.
Source: Center for State and Local Government Excellence, January 2010
From the summary:
Hiring freezes, pay freezes, layoffs, and furloughs top the list of ways that local and state governments are cutting costs, according to a Center for Excellence online survey of government managers.
States and local governments also have made significant changes in their benefit offerings.
- Changes in health and retirement plans
Half of the respondents, human resources professionals, report that their governments have made changes to their health care plans:
* Increased employee contributions (69 percent)
* Added number of years required to vest (25 percent)
* Added wellness programs, 24-hour nurse lines, or on-site clinics (25 percent)
* Reduced benefits (23 percent)
* Tiered benefits (15 percent)
* Decreased employer contributions (10 percent)
Among the 21 percent whose governments have changed their retirement plans, 73 percent say the changes have not affected current workers and 60 percent say the changes have not affected new hires.
- Critical positions go unfilled
There are signs that governments need a more strategic approach to their talent challenges. Survey respondents said they are struggling to fill certain critical positions, including jobs in engineering, skilled trades, information technology, health care, finance, law enforcement, and top management.
- Furloughs don't always equal savings
Even furloughs have not produced the savings that had been anticipated in some places. While 61 percent of respondents say that they achieved the savings that had been budgeted, 39 percent said they did not.
- Fiscal constraints and talent challenges
The economic downturn has affected retirement plans, giving governments a little breathing room. Almost half (46 percent) of the survey's respondents report that retirement-eligible employees are postponing their retirements.
Source: Rosemary O'Leary, Public Administration Review, Vol. 70 no. 1, January-February 2010
(subscription required)
From the abstract:
"Guerrilla government" is Rosemary O'Leary's term for the actions of career public servants who work against the wishes--either implicitly or explicitly communicated--of their superiors. This form of dissent is usually carried out by those who are dissatisfied with the actions of public organizations, programs, or people, but typically, for strategic reasons, choose not to go public with their concerns in whole or in part. Rather than acting openly, guerrillas often move clandestinely behind the scenes, salmon swimming against the current of power. Guerrillas run the spectrum from anti-establishment liberals to fundamentalist conservatives, from constructive contributors to deviant destroyers.
Three public managers with significant experience comment on O'Leary's thesis that guerrilla government is about the power of career bureaucrats; the tensions between career bureaucrats and political appointees; organization culture; and what it means to act responsibly, ethically, and with integrity as a public servant. Karl Sleight, former director of the New York State Ethics Commission; David Warm, executive director of the Mid-America Regional Council of Greater Kansas City; and Ralph R. Bauer, former deputy regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Seattle and Chicago regions, present unique perspectives on the "guerrilla" influence on policy and management, as well as the challenges posed by this ever-present public management phenomenon.
Guerrilla: One who engages in irregular warfare especially as a member of an independent unit.
See also:
Comments by
- Karl Sleight
- David Warm
- Ralph R. Bauer
Source: National Employment Law Project, January 10, 2010
Urban areas across the United States (including Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and St. Paul) have limited discrimination in city and county jobs against people with criminal records. As Mayor Richard Daley explained when he announced Chicago's new hiring policy, "Implementing this new policy won't be easy, but it's the right thing to do. . . . We cannot ask private employers to consider hiring former prisoners unless the City practices what it preaches."
Source: Robert L. Clark, Center for State and Local Government Excellence, Issue Brief, November 2009
States with the lowest unfunded liabilities include North Dakota, Wyoming, Iowa, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Oklahoma; states with the largest include New Jersey, New York, California, North Carolina, Connecticut, Louisiana, and Texas. The brief finds that:
- Although there are wide-spread reports of a major fiscal crisis, the reality is that some states face a fiscal crisis while others do not.
- There are substantial differences in the total liabilities of state retiree health plans, depending on the generosity of the plan and the size of the public sector.
- Retirement benefits are not protected by state laws or constitutions, and public sector employers will continue to amend their plans to reduce costs.
See also:
2008 version
Source: Joseph A. McCartin, Journal of American History, Vol. 95 no. 1, June 2008
(subscription required)
From the abstract:
The explosive rise of public sector unions in the United States in the 1960s and the early 1970s resembled in many ways the breakthrough of industrial unionism in the 1930s. The unionization of teachers, police officers, fire fighters, secretaries, sanitation workers, and other government employees was every bit as sudden and unexpected as the depression-era industrial union upsurge had been. Membership in public sector unions grew tenfold between 1955 and 1975, topping four million by the early 1970s. Moreover, newly organized government workers behaved just as militantly as did auto and steel workers a generation earlier. In 1958 there were a mere 15 public sector strikes recorded in the United States; in 1975 the number hit 478. It is little wonder then that so many observers compared public sector unionism to the rise decades before of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Describing a scene reminiscent of a famous history of the 1930s by Irving Bernstein, the journalist Irwin Ross suggested in 1968 that the upsurge in government workers' activism had created a "turbulent state" by the late 1960s. Ralph J. Flynn, a lobbyist for the fastest growing public sector union, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), also used a depression-era benchmark. Surveying AFSCME's prospects in 1974 he concluded that "today is 1934 in the public sector." And, when a Pennsylvania state official tried to understand the unionization of state workers, he also drew on history: "We went through this in the '30s in the private sector," he explained. "Now we are going through it in the public."
Source: National Conference of State Legislatures, November 2009
All 50 states provide health insurance coverage for their state employees. Most have done so for decades. However, the amount of coverage, who is eligible to enroll, and the portions paid by the state employer and by the individual worker always have varied from state to state.
In the past five years these state benefit plans have attracted much more attention among legislators, governors and policymakers. Often, this is because:
1. Rapidly rising commercial premiums are impacting state budgets;
2. State fiscal pressures are leading to more proposals to increase employee share of costs;
3. Co-payments and deductibles are on the rise in many places, separate from the established premiums.
See also:
* In the News: 2009 State Employee Health Programs Debates and Changes
* 2009 State Employee Health Premiums: Family coverage (includes comparison with 2006 premiums)
* 2009 Individual Coverage (includes comparison with 2006 premiums) - email for copy
* 2008 State Legislator Compensation- Health, Dental and Optical Benefits
* Chart of State Employee Health Premiums - 1999-2006 (compares cost of family coverage)
* Trends in State Employee Health Benefits
Source: Donald Taylor, Labor Law Journal, Vol. 60 no. 3, Fall 2009
The Garrity Rights doctrine protects public employees from being compelled to incriminate themselves in investigatory interviews with their employers. The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the government from compelling a person to incriminate themselves, and public workers are employees of the government itself; therefore they are protected from being compelled by their employer to incriminate themselves in an investigatory interview.
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