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Originally Posted by ardecila
Would you trust any of our elected officials to have the financial savvy and management skills to make a fair decision in a CTA-union arbitration? Chances are, they'll just do the bidding of whoever whines the loudest. Unless they're a die-hard conservative (in IL, no less) they will probably side with labor over management... no better than any impartial arbitrator, but far more uninformed.
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The difference is that an elected official would be accountable to the people who voted to elected him - notice how a ~60% Democratic majority on the national level couldn't move the ball over the finish line because not enough are willing to take ownership of some combination of service cuts or tax/fee increases. The same moderating effect would be at play if people with some accountability were responsible for public sector labor costs, as well.
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This is the problem with public-sector unions.
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Labor unions are, almost by definition, a construct by which employees can oppose management and ownership of the employer and seek to extract maximum value for themselves, and minimize the value extracted by management and ownership, so long as the employer stays can remain a going concern.
Unlike in the private sector, the ownership that a government union is opposed to is
the public itself, and the employer is an essential public service that
can't go out of business. There's a very good reason that, despite being a pro-labor president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was opposed to the formation of public sector unions, which didn't become pervasive until the post-War years.
In the private sector, the impact of labor unions has largely been able to play itself out, e.g. in order to remain viable, businesses just relocate. This is why public sector union workers dominate the organized labor landscape by now, as the playing field is tilted in their favor since the "management" and "ownership" they are opposed to have essentially unlimited resources (revenue raised via taxation rather than sales as in the private sector) and their employer, as a public agency, has a monopoly and thus there are no substitutes by which to introduce competition to keep the economics sane.
This all also why public sector unions are the most vocal supporters of income tax increases. They know that it means more money for them at the expense of "ownership" i.e. the public.
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I'm not familiar with the arbitration process as it is used at CTA... is it done over the course of one session, or does the arbitrator give CTA/the unions time to evaluate the financial consequences of the decision before he shoves it down their throats? The process might be a little more equitable if, after the arbitrator suggests a compromise, CTA is given time to determine exactly what cost-saving measures or new revenue sources it would use, and vice versa for the unions (although the consequences of a decision unfavorable to unions are much simpler).
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I don't recall the details of the process - there are a couple iterations and opportunities for appeals for both parties, but eventually the "impartial" arbitrator's decision is binding and enforceable in court.
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