I have worked both union and non-union jobs and am currently a union public employee.  I have seen my share of bad employees in both the public and private sector.  The difference generally is the bad employees in the private sector bounce from place to place while in public employment they stagnate in one position for life.  Currently many states are in financial crisis for many different reasons and the first targets are always the public workforce and in my eyes this is because the unions protect the worst of the worst to the detriment of good employees.

One of the biggest problems I have found is that the union leadership is generally made up of a bunch of people who were either problem employees, who always needed union help, or just psuedo politicians looking to be in some position of power.  Their complete lack of forsight puts quality employees in a terrible position where they lose all public support and by that kill any bargaining power.  At a time when the economy sucks and any funding is at a premium,  you cannot keep protecting people who show up late everyday, call out once a week, and just do a flat out terrible job.  It will take decades to turn around the image of public employees but that cannot even start when the unions refuse to sacrifice the LCDs.

In my current position I have encountered the worst employee, maybe in the history of employment.  We will call this person X, for the sake of anonimity.  X has not only done all of the aforementioned transgressions he has also been suspended twice for sexual harrassment, once for lateness and written up at least a dozen times.  You would think the union hierarchy would say ” we can’t waste a our time protecting X to the detriment of the facility and other employees”.  Of course this never crosses any of their minds and the proletariat left to suffer the real consequences are the workers who show up everyday and want to accomplish whatever tasks are in front of them.  By protecting X the morale of the entire workforce is crushed.  Imagine coming to work and knowing that there are no serious consequences for almost anything you do.

Until the union leadership allows accountability good workers will continue to be driven away from some very important public positions and the image of the workforce will continue to fall.  It’s a shame to see an organization that should be protecting workers, actually hurting them by saving the worst of the worst from themselves.  So remember when you hear that the government agency you work for needs to lay people off, look around and see just how much dead weight the unions are protecting.

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