Business

How Public Sector Unions are Destroying the Agencies they Serve from the Inside Out

The three aged tenets of unionism that do more harm than good

Private sector union membership has been steadily decreasing over the last 50 years; but it is only in the last decade or so that we have seen decline in public sector union membership.

While people are often quick to look for outside threats or factors, it is time for public sector union leaders to stop wringing their hands and pointing fingers, and instead pull out a mirror and take a good, long, hard look at the real reasons.

Let me first preface my remarks by saying that I am pro-union. I spent much of the last 30 years working in private and public union jobs and held the Secretary-Treasurer office for my fire department union for 6 years.

But much like if your favorite uncle is drinking himself to death, at some point you can’t just sit around hoping he will stop. Sometimes the family has to rally around the uncle, grab him by the collar, shake him and shout, “Get your shit together!”

It’s done out of love and compassion, but it can be harsh in the moment. I am going to get pretty real in this article but know that it is out of hope that unions’ leadership might slip off their blinders and take out their ear pods for a second and look around and listen.

Let me also explain why I am going to concentrate mostly on police and firefighter unions. One, I know them really well. But, two, police and fire unions can’t strike. That is true pretty much anywhere, either by statute or contractual agreement. With that being the case, in many states they enjoy what is called “Binding Arbitration”.

Binding arbitration just means that a judge or arbiter will ultimately decide any disagreement between labor and management with a decision by which both must adhere. It is uncommon for police and fire unions to bargain to impasse and have it stay unresolved.

A judge or arbiter will also tend to “Split the baby” and settle somewhere between to two parties’ positions. This almost always results in a net gain for the union. (Not always, but nearly.) So, as the police and fire unions inexorably chug forward financially, many of the other public sector unions hitch their wagons to that movement.

So, in many ways, police and fire unions are the bellwether of all the public sector unions. Where they go, the rest follow.

So, let’s take a look at the three major things that are killing public sector union employers, and as a result weakening union membership. All of them revolve around hiring and promotion practices.

Hard skills as hiring standards

The first is the dogged insistence on using hard skills as the primary measure for initial hire of employees, but even more importantly for internal promotions. The reason unions tend to insist on the use of hard skills as factors for promotion is that they are much more objective and easier to measure than soft skills. So, they are a more “fair” measure of promotability.

Setting aside for a moment the bigger concept that, “That’s not fair!” is a phrase that should be reserved exclusively for three-year old’s, the concept of fairness shouldn’t even enter into the promotion discussion.

The promotion discussion should be about who is the very best person to fill the role. End of discussion. And therein lies the problem. Unions tend to insist on fairness in promotional proceedings which most often means the best person isn’t chosen for the role.

I am going to let you in on a secret. The hard skills of firefighting are not the least bit complicated; it’s this: Put the wet stuff on the red stuff. And, if the fire isn’t going out, put more wet stuff on it.

Sure, there are best practices for doing so, and even some science behind those concepts. But, everyone with a year or more on the job has grasped 95% of those nuances. Testing people on who might be incrementally better at regurgitating those nuances onto a written test form goes beyond asinine. Especially if you are promoting someone into a leadership role.

Shouldn’t you be evaluating your prospective leaders on their soft skills like communication, emotional intelligence, social skills, and relationship building? Nope. Not if you are in a union. Those are subjective concepts. Using those wouldn’t be “FAIR”.

Seniority

The second place where unions are failing their employers is in the insistence of using seniority as a factor for promotion. This provides a double whammy of possibility for finding exactly the wrong person for a role.

Not only are unions supporting the idea that simply showing up and barely functioning is cause for moving up the ranks, this also cultivates the possibility that someone will be around to take several cracks at the hard-skill evaluation and get better at passing the test simply from taking the test. Huh? Defies logic, doesn’t it?

Walk into a fire department or police administration building and you will find at least one, if not more, person who is counting off their final years while occupying a role where they are massively incompetent and unsuited to perform. I have seen it. Over and over again.

It is wrong. It hurts employers. It hurts the other union employees, and most importantly, it hurts the citizens that the public entity serves. This practice is further encouraged by the third way unions are failing their stakeholders:

Refusal to remove ineffective managers

Unions have a tendency to push back against managerial actions. Perhaps done in part simply by principle, but I also believe it is because unions get themselves tangled in the web of duty of fair representation.

The duty of fair representation is an overarching framework that applies to much of what unions do. The essence is this: Unions have a duty to represent all employees in good faith and without discrimination; and — here it is again — “fairly”. Uh oh.

I can tell you from my years as a union executive officer that this one concept has confuddled and conflated many a topic. Part of the confusion lies solely in the name. If I had a quarter for every time I heard a union steward say, “Yeah, but we have a duty to represent” in support of pursuing a push back against the employer for something that was not only within their management rights, but also was simply right and just to do (and often even “fair” too). But the union would misguidedly fight the action on principle.

So, it goes nearly without saying that any time an employer would want to demote someone because they were super crappy at their job, the union will fight the move. Even if the people in the union agree that the person is doing a bad job, they will fight because they fear that management might make indiscriminate decisions.

And guess what; the unions often win this fight. Why? Just as it is tough to measure the existence of soft skills, it is also very hard to prove the absence. Employers have a tough time proving that someone can’t communicate, even if it is clear to everyone that they cannot.

The thing is though, the union need only consider the merits of the situation to meet the duty of fair representation standard. They are not ever compelled to act, and this has been upheld repeatedly in court. Yet unions feel that they are somehow not doing their job if they don’t tilt at the windmills.

Enough about the problems, I am sure I could go on and on. How do we fix them?

There are two changes that unions need to make to eradicate these dated tenets and start providing a competent and qualified labor force in lower and middle management roles. Once they implement them in promotional situations, they can roll them out for initial hiring.

Unions need to claim a stake in hiring and promotional practices

The first thing union leadership needs to do is approach management and claim a decisive role in the hiring and promotion process.

“Oh yeah! That’s what we have been talking about all along!” — Every union president right now.

Sure, but hold on. Let’s look at what that means. Having a stake in the process means assuring management that you are committed to finding exactly the right person for every job; and, it means following through on your assurance.

That means the union needs to discard the ideas of seniority, time in rank, hard skills, union favoritism (what, unions play favorites?), and especially “fairness” out of the consideration for finding the right person.

That means that the woman with one year on the department and 10 years of work as a public accountant is probably the best fit for the finance officer position rather than the 25-year fire captain that can’t even spell amortization.

Radical concept, I know.

If unions can promise and deliver on this one thing, they are halfway to profoundly shifting the paradigm of public sector union workplaces.

Demote people that do not perform in their roles

The complementary piece of this equation is that incompetent workers need to be removed from roles where they do not perform to exceptional standards.

Please note, I did not say adequate standards. I said exceptional. If a private company would fire or demote this person and put someone more suited in their place, then the public sector union organization should as well. Period!

The union role in this is simple. Don’t fight asinine battles. When everyone knows that someone is underperforming, it is not the union’s role to assure that they keep their job. It never has been the union’s role; it just seems that no one told them that.

When someone sucks, the union should say, “Yep, they suck. Let us find you a better replacement.” In most cases, there isn’t any need to fire the employee. They have just demonstrated the Peter Principle and promoted past their competency level.

Chances are they were super good at putting wet stuff on red stuff. The employer, the union and the community all need that service. Let that employee do what they are really good at.

I hope you have stuck with me so far. Real quickly let’s talk about what needs to happen for this to play out, and what happens if it doesn’t.

What needs to happen is that public sector union leadership needs to take a gigantic step back and look at their industry, public and private sector unions, and the job market as a whole. They need to spend more time speculating about the future and less time micro-focused on being fair.

I tried very hard, but unsuccessfully, to convince my union of this when I joined the executive board. Unfortunately, the common belief was that the deck chair aligning was more important than scanning the skyline for icebergs that they were convinced couldn’t possibly exist.

We all know the end of this Titanic analogy. Sadly, that is the destiny for labor unions that fail to adequately scan their horizons for threats more imminent and devastating than trying to slice the licorice sticks evenly so that everyone gets the same size piece.

I truly am an advocate for unions, and I sincerely want them to survive and thrive. I hope my prospective grandchildren will enjoy the fruits of an awakened union movement that adapts and responds to today’s rapidly changing labor picture.

I am just afraid that if I don’t say something today, that unions won’t be around for that version of the future.

If you liked this article, you may also like:

Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.