Episode #53: Accountability Matters

Greetings and Salutations, and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller. I thought for a change of pace, I would talk about something that ins't near or dear to my heart in any way, shape or fashion, but it is something that I have a more than a passing knowledge of. And for an added bonus, this actually ties in quite snugly with the protest flavor of the month, defunding the police.

Public sector unions and their loathsome contracts.

For those of you who may be first time visitors to this blog and don't know diddly/squat about me, I work for a state guv'ment agency. Who I actually work for doesn't really matter, since the job I perform (payroll) is quite interchangeable with other agencies.

Anywho, performing my job for the last 16+ years has given me a cockroach's eye-view of a plethora of public sector union contracts. And armed with that knowledge, I'm going to make a solid argument tying the public sector unions, money and politicians (mostly Democrats) together as a reason why defunding the police is not going to work and why accountability will never happen so long as that particular triad is functioning.

For the most part, all pubic sector contracts contain about 85% boilerplate language. In other words, if you open a typical public sector contract (which you can easily find on any state government website) (for CT, it would be Office of Purchasing Management, sub agency Dept of Labor, sub section, labor contracts), about 85% of the language is all the same. The other 15% would contain language specific for that particular bargaining unit (compensation mostly, and some grievance procedures), like disciplinary matters (up to and including termination)

What now follows is a basic description of the procedures that have to be followed in order to potentially terminate a public sector union employee.

1} Paper trail. Document, document, document, and when you're done documenting, document some more. You must document every single disciplinary encounter with the employee. If not, it will turn into a he said/she said, and points will be deducted if you can't show a consistent accumulation of disciplinary actions.

2} Once you succeed in collecting a good paper trail, you'll will have those pesky little union hearings. Again, you will have to have all your ducks in a row, with all of your "I's" dotted and your "T's" crossed. Miss anything, and I mean anything, you will have to start back at square one.

3} I forgot to mention that one of those pesky little union hearings actually requires a fact finding hearing called a Loudermill had to be held. This is a requirement if you want to actually terminate any kind of public sector employee. Failure to do will result in starting over from scratch.

4} If, somehow by the grace of whatever deity you choose to worship, you make it this far, you get to pitch your case in front of an incredibly biased arbitration juror. I say biased, because for the exception of sports, entertainment and most large business, 99% of the time these arbiters favor the union employees. Need I say more?

5} On the very slim (like infinitesimal)  chance that you might win, you can terminate the employee. Even then, you might not be out of the woods. The appeals process is wonderful thing, which in turn can make you simply pay the person to go away. Heavily.

6} More often than not, you'll have to take the employee, who if this was the real world, would stay justifiably fired. This will only make the general public hate unions even more.

Worst case example: that twat who stayed outside the Stoneman Douglas High school was rehired. With full back pay and seniority restored. Click on the link for sordid details.

So when people in the know who aren't MSM or Democrats tell you that a public sector employee can't be fired, believe them 100%. Democrats are the root of all the problems with public sector unions (in our state, for the longest time the Democrats were too scared to actually vote for anyone public sector contracts whenever they came out for renewal, preferring instead to just sit on their dainty money-grubbing hands and let it become legal after a 30 day grace period) and so long as they willingly drop their pants and spread them wide,  the problems will continue to exist.

Btw, you can thank Democrats for all of the fiscal problems in the blue states that they run because a good chunk of their fiscal insanity is directly due to the overly generous union contracts that were created through bad faith bargaining.

{c} 2020 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved