Would you encourage family members to study to become teachers  or other government employees?   Unless we can answer “yes”, government is failing as an employer.

Can you hear the voices of elected officials berating and blaming their employees for government performance problems, laziness, and being “thugs”?  Employees are tired of it.  They want respect and fair treatment.

The problem is obvious in states where taxes and budgets have been cut for public schools.  Supplies and equipment are inadequate.  Salaries and benefits have been frozen or reduced.  Teachers have taken to the streets for unofficial strikes that close schools.  Other public employees won’t be far behind.  Their frustration has risen to the level where organizing into resurgent unions is an alternative that many are willing to consider.

I was inexperienced  and just beginning my first role as CEO when a labor union attempted to organize employees at the small-town hospital where I worked.  I thought we’d be better off without a union in between employees and management but I had no experience with campaigns or unions.  It was frightening.

I was fortunate to have as Board Chairman the manager of a manufacturing plant that had been unionized for many years. A couple of years after Ed arrived, the company petitioned for a new election and the employees voted the union out.  He was justifiably proud of the confidence that employees placed in management by giving up union representation.  Ed coached me through the organizing campaign.

Ed’s key point was that nobody enjoys paying union dues, going to meetings, or the hostility and strikes that can result from failed negotiations.  If people feel respected, fairly paid, and fairly treated; and if they believe that management is honest with them, they will not vote for a union.  If employees vote a union in, it will be because management has lost their trust.

That was great advice.  The result was far more than union-avoidance.  When we got it right, we transformed management and employees into a team.  In that environment, the whole organization was more successful; pulling together particularly well at the most difficult times.  Legislators need to learn Ed’s lesson but instead some try to bully their way to whatever outcomes they want.  Bullying often works for the short term, but in the long term, it’s destined to fail.

I’m thinking mostly about teachers as I write this but it also applies  to beleaguered employees of North Carolina’s prison system,  psychiatric hospitals, the IRS, VA and others.  Like educators, they are well supplied with mandates and criticisms but have little  control over the way they do their work.  The mandates and criticisms come from legislators who make laws without input from the people who actually do the work.

Legislative failure to produce a safety net for the poor resulted in schools becoming the last resort place to feed children who don’t have enough to eat at home.  Legislative failure to produce a functional mental health system resulted in schools needing a patchwork of services to fill that gap.

Outside of schools, jails are overcrowded so taxpayers fund their expansion.  The expensive new space will serve as temporary housing for mentally ill and drug addicted inmates who will not receive effective treatment in jail so after release they’re likely to serve yet another term, again without effective treatment of their illness.  Wages and working conditions in prisons are so poor that the state has difficulty hiring enough employees.  Who wants to work for that kind of employer?

In many “red” states, where the problems that I’ve described are most common, legislatures have banned public employee strikes or adopted laws that prevent requiring union membership by all employees when the majority votes to unionize.  Those are bullying tactics that have worked for the short term.  Recent actions by teachers in several states demonstrate that the short term is over.

When enough employees are fed up with legislative malfeasance they will use their options of last resort, organization and strikes, whether legal or not.  It’s not too late, but time is running out.  Legislators and government officials should learn the wisdom of Ed’s lesson.  If public employees feel respected, fairly paid, and fairly treated; and if they believe that management is honest with them, they will not walk off the job or organize a union.  If they do, legislators must look in a mirror to see the reason.