by Kerry Thomas
February 25, 2011
In the February 25, 2011 edition of the Lakeland Times, Steve Lucarelli, an attorney from Eagle River, paints a pretty bleak picture of a day without unionized public employees.
Personally, I was raised with a different set of values and beliefs. I have more faith in my neighbors, some of whom are public employees.
Mr. Lucarelli begins his tale of woe with 12 inches of snow at 6 am. This happens quite often here in the Northwoods. My neighbor who leaves for work at 6:15 am has four wheel drive, and makes the long trek from Sayner to Land O’ Lakes five days a week, in good weather and bad. Another neighbor’s first small business employee arrives by 6:30 to begin to clear the walkways. Another neighbor and his wife both have four wheel drive vehicles and leave at 7 am to drive to Eagle River to work, five days a week, in good weather or bad. Another neighbor goes for his morning mail around 8:30, also in his four wheel drive vehicle.
On those days when we do get that much snow, I’m the guy who’s out clearing not only my driveway, but my four neighbors’ driveways at first light. I have most of our town road cleared by the time the local town crew gets here to plow. (Most of the town crew also have their own business ventures, and know they won’t stay in business if they don’t do their jobs.) There are days when it’s almost a contest to see who will get our neighborhood cleared first, as there are at least four of us who see to it the job gets done, with or without the town plows.
My neighbors and I are fortunate enough to get our water from our own wells, not a municipal source. And having known it was going to get cold, we made sure we had adequate supplies of fuel on hand to keep the heat on. No frozen pipes.
Continuing with Mr. Lucarelli’s tragic storyline, there’s a car crash, with injuries. When we call 911 for help, and find no dispatchers on duty because they are striking in solidarity with other public employees, we call our local firefighters and EMTs personally. My neighbors with medical training (as a nurse and as EMTs) render assistance to the injured. Our emergency personnel respond in their personal vehicles. One brings the ambulance. The injured party is taken to our local privately-run hospital, which is staffed and running.
No school for the kids? Snow Day! But not all is lost, because, with the internet, one can always find an educational project they can work on. Or maybe instead they go out and help shovel that 12” of snow from the neighbors’ sidewalks and driveways.
There’s not a lot that can be done if the custodians refuse to do the jobs they were hired to do, short of replacing them. If the school does freeze and cause damage, private sector insurance pays the bill. But next year’s insurance premiums will rise. Taxpayers again foot the bill for the actions of striking public employees.
In a prior life, I was a security agent at a Wisconsin supercomputer firm. Working a night shift in the middle of a blizzard, alarms began to sound. When I called for assistance, the on-call technician actually walked over a mile to work, as the city streets were all but impassable that night. If we had been required to follow some obscure union rules, we could never have fixed the problem. Instead, we troubleshot the system ourselves, and devised a makeshift solution, utilizing a large sheet of cardboard to block the effects of the blizzard on vital equipment until a more permanent solution could be installed two days later.
As for the bus drivers, most of the drivers I know drive a school bus as a second or supplemental job. With no school, they go to work at one of their other jobs.
Delivery truck drivers have other private-sector businesses they will deliver goods to. My brother’s bar is well-stocked, and ends up serving a number of striking public employees their lunch.
At 10 am in Mr. Lucarelli’s storyline, an escaped jail inmate breaks into my neighbor’s house. Since in this tragic story all the sheriff’s department employees have quit their jobs, my neighbors and I arm ourselves and neutralize any threat from this escaped inmate. It’s a little concept known as self-defense, wherein people rely on themselves and their neighbors for their own protection and safety.
Next, while walking in the neighborhood (after we’ve cleared the sidewalks ourselves), a tree blows over into a power line, sparking a house fire. There are no professional firefighters to call, which is nothing new in Vilas County, where we have volunteer fire departments. As with the earlier car accident, I call my local fire chief, whom I’ve known since kindergarten. Volunteer firemen respond.
Meanwhile, one of my neighbors has managed to disconnect the power by shooting the breaker fuse from the power pole. Other neighbors have brought fire extinguishers to keep the blaze in check until the firemen arrive.
When lives are at stake, you pitch in and help in whatever way you can. Neighbors helping neighbors.
At the courthouse, elected officials are there, in the dark? What, no one can flip a light switch? And, oh, dear, no paperwork is being filed? In the private sector, contracts are still being negotiated and signed. Business deals can still be done; it’ll just take longer to file the official paperwork.
Meanwhile, since the public employees have all quit their jobs, our elected officials do what they must now do. They hire replacements from the private sector. Our elected officials offer these replacement employees wages, fringe benefits and retirement plans that exceed what is offered in the private sector, yet still manage to save the taxpayers some money.
There is abundant demand for these jobs, which are quickly filled.
Life, while temporarily interrupted, returns to normal. Responsible employees continue to work; irresponsible employees join the ranks of the unemployed.
The sky is not falling, Chicken Little.
Mr. Lucarelli asks if we can really risk a world without [unionized public employees]. If we want a truly productive public workforce, the answer is an overwhelming yes, especially in light of current economic circumstances.
What would we do without unionized public employees? Ask yourself that on a Saturday or Sunday, when they have the weekend off.