John Bing makes an excellent point. The difficulty of getting rid of sub par
employees is real and it is the unintended consequence of trying to minimize
political influence in government work. That is particularly true where
governmental workers have very strong unions, such as teachers and police
(at least in our part of the county-Northeast US) But similar problems
happen in private business. Have you ever heard of a stagehand being fired
for incompetence? And I know of one IBM employee who had 12 managers before
he was fired. An even greater problem for government department heads is
pressure to hire folks on the recommendation of elected officials. I know a
few department heads who have taken smaller budgets and workforces in
exchange for the right to hire folks of their own choice and not those who
are recommended.

In New York State, however, the government is not he employer of last
resort. Traditionally people who cannot qualify for governmental patronage
jobs and who have political connections get jobs from Con Edison (utility
company) and Verizon (telephone company). There is an informal deal between
the companies and governmental entities that in return for "sympathetic"
hiring practices the companies receive "sympathetic" review of their rate
increase requests. So, private industry is not immune from deadwood, as any
construction company contractor, who is paying for an elevator operator on a
construction site without an elevator, will attest to.
nburlakoff

-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf
Of John A. Bing
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 12:29 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Bureaucrat vs. What?, re National Park Service Archaeologists

Just my two cents worth on an interesting thread.

Firstly, I believe most of our subscribers have made a good case for
keeping the National Parks service as government employees.  However,
the few who support privatizing have not made a good case and, in my
opinion, they have not mentioned the most commonly felt negative side
of bureaucracy.

Recently, when privatizing another part of the national government was
a TV event, a spokesman for privatizing stated that once a person is a
government employee, (Civil Service) the rules and procedures for
firing or demoting poor employees are so onerous and time consuming
that only a minute number of these employees are ever fired.  Bosses
do not want to get into the endless delays, appeals and union
criticisms.  Instead, it seems, getting rid of an unproductive worker
is by transferring him/her to another department.

The Peoples Republic of China had a name for this:  "Iron Ricebowl
mentality" ie: no matter whether you worked or not you will still be
paid (so long as you don't criticizes the system).  Not surprising,
the past 20 years has seen the PRC privatize industry and business and
as a result, the economy (and benefits for the people) has boomed.

I guess the key feature here is that no one system is beyond reproach
or abuse.  Accordingly, if you don't have some practical form of
checks and balances, things will not be as good or productive as we
hope will be the case.

John Bing
ps BTW, I have spent over five years in China and know well of what I
write of their systems.

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 23:30:49 -0400, you wrote:

>In reply to the proposed, and then defeated, move to "outsource" the jobs
of
>the National Park Service archeologists from the federal government
>"non-profit sector" to the "private for-profit sector", Mr. Atherton wrote:
>
>> Interesting question though - why do the archaeologists need to be
>> Government Employees (bureaucrats)? It would seem to make much more sense
>> for these services to be privatized, because on the whole, the work isn't
>> really "governmental". The argument for "loss of expertise" seems a
little
>> spurious. For one thing, in this instance, the (ex) Parks Archaeologists
>> would be in an ideal situation to set themselves up as consultants.
>>
>> tim
>
>
>A question for Mr. Atherton and others of similar opinion:
>
>Take the following work situations:
>
>a private, nonprofit museum
>a state museum
>a city museum
>a county cultural agency
>a corporate museum
>a private, nonprofit house museum.
>
>If, at various times in a person's work life, that person is employed as a
>curator in each of the above situations and performs the same curatorial
>work in each situation, is the person a "bureaucrat" when working in a
>museum run by a governmental body, and "not a bureaucrat" when working in a
>museum that functions under a different governance structure?
>
>What is "governmental work" and what is not "governmental work"?
>
>Should everything be run by for-profit contractors?
>
>Is a job in the "for-profit" sector inherently "better" than the same job
in
>the "non-profit" sector?  Or vice versa?
>
>If anyone wishes to respond, they can do it to the list or off-list to
>[log in to unmask]
>
>Thank you,
>
>Nancy Powell
>
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