{"id":3095,"date":"2010-03-13T13:03:18","date_gmt":"2010-03-13T17:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=3095"},"modified":"2010-03-15T14:00:26","modified_gmt":"2010-03-15T18:00:26","slug":"privatization-lets-not-be-ideological","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/03\/13\/privatization-lets-not-be-ideological\/","title":{"rendered":"Privatization? Let’s not be ideological!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Fulford<\/a> on the problems with unions in the public service:<\/p>\n

\n

Unions hate the very word \u201cprivatization.\u201d And no wonder. Their present system is close to perfect: Their workers can\u2019t be fired but can strike, as they do from time to time, demonstrating their power. They win most of their struggles with politicians, who throw billions at them just to keep them quiet. (After all, it\u2019s not as if the politicians were spending their own money.)<\/p>\n

This arrangement became commonplace in Canada about half a century ago, turning public-sector employees into princes of the working class who make more money than other people doing the same jobs, and receive more generous benefits.<\/p>\n

Union members passionately believe this is no more than their due. The unions and their friends believe public ownership is fundamentally good, private ownership at best dubious. In 1994, when it seemed possible that Ontario would privatize liquor sales, the Ontario Liquor Boards Employees\u2019 Union commissioned a study by a York University economist, Nuri Jazairi. He found, no surprise, that this was a bad idea and that the provincial government should continue to control every ounce of liquor sold within provincial boundaries, presumably for eternity.<\/p>\n

But his report was most revealing when he turned to the motives of those who favour privatization. He suggested the idea sprang from \u201cpurely political and ideological reasons,\u201d among which he listed \u201cthe control of public expenditures\u201d and \u201climiting the role of government in managing the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s no surprise that the folks who benefit disproportionally from the current arrangement are the most vocally opposed to any changes which would reduce their advantages. If the government did get enough political will to go ahead and privatize, there’s no way (unless the government tied their hands in advance) that private enterprise would give — or could afford to give — their employees the same pay and benefits they currently enjoy under public ownership.<\/p>\n

Update<\/b>: Speaking of situations which could only arise under public ownership, here’s a perfect example<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

More than 1,250 Ontario Ministry of Revenue employees will soon be receiving severance packages of up to $45,000 each — but they won\u2019t be out of work. Most of them aren\u2019t even switching desks. They\u2019re simply being transferred from the provincial payroll to the federal payroll when the province moves to a federal harmonized sales tax this summer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Fulford on the problems with unions in the public service: Unions hate the very word \u201cprivatization.\u201d And no wonder. Their present system is close to perfect: Their workers can\u2019t be fired but can strike, as they do from time to time, demonstrating their power. They win most of their struggles with politicians, who throw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,25,84],"tags":[509,86,395,87,394,207,392],"class_list":["post-3095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-cancon","category-economics","category-government","tag-civilservice","tag-criticism","tag-lcbo","tag-ontario","tag-privatization","tag-toronto","tag-unions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-NV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3095"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3118,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3095\/revisions\/3118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}