The last few weeks have not been good times for California’s public employees, whether they work for cities, counties, the state or schools.
The governor was especially stingy when it came to pay raises this year, state university faculties are at loggerheads with their chancellor, and unions representing most of those on the public payroll are largely out of favor. While that’s enough to make them a bit downhearted, the unrelenting attack on civil servants by both left and right in this fall’s election put them one step below folks who hawk used cars and just above telemarketers.
Condemnation of government employees has long been a staple of Republican rhetoric, and this year’s campaign was no exception. Dan Lungren attacked “educational bureaucrats in Sacramento,” linking them with teachers around the state. He implied that classroom teachers and the capitol bureaucracy were synonymous, forgetting that he himself is an eight-year Sacramento bureaucrat.
The right also used the threat of an increased bureaucracy in its assault on Proposition 10, the early childhood development proposal financed by a tobacco tax. Despite their self-proclaimed dedication to local control rather than state-directed programs, conservatives zeroed in on Prop. 10’s formation of 58 county commissions with “thousands of new bureaucrats” and “a massive new state bureaucracy.” The fear of bureaucracy appeared six times in the short anti-10 argument in the state voter’s guide.
Somewhat surprisingly, the educational establishment condemned by Lungren used that same theme this year. In opposing Proposition 224 on the June ballot, the California Teachers Association specifically attacked the huge bureaucracy at Sacramento that would have been created by the requirement that state employees rather than private business handle design work on state-funded projects. In November, CTA resurrected that argument to oppose Proposition 8’s “Bureaucracy Czar,” officially known as the “Chief Inspector of Public Schools.” Their flyer condemned the new bureaucracy in four different sentences.
CTA doesn’t seem to realize that in the popular mind, teachers, as public employees, are part of the detested bureaucracy. The union’s anti-bureaucracy campaign tactic contributed to a growing animosity toward “bureaucrats,” which to the public means anyone who draws a government paycheck. At a time when public schools face increasing hostility from those who support private education, charter schools and vouchers, the union foolishly played into the hands of those who would crush public education.
Instead of joining in such a non-productive attack on fellow government workers, CTA would have served its members better with an informational campaign devoted to raising the public’s awareness of the service provided by state and local workers in all fields. Those so-called bureaucrats are our neighbors, who help provide needed public services from garbage collection to public safety, water and air-quality control, and protection of public health, to name a few. The extremists would privatize all public services, including schools and law enforcement, under the guise of cutting big government.
Unthinkingly, many Americans complain about the officialdom at the motor vehicle department or the tax assessment office. But if asked to seriously consider the privatization of such services, they would realize that these matters in private hands would present a grand opportunity for lining private pockets at the expense of the public.
If bureaucracy is an inflexible routine, with rigid rules and forms, that phenomenon can be found as effectively entrenched in private business as in government. Try arguing with bureaucrats at the phone company or a cable provider. And if you think the clerk at the DMV is uncaring, what about the voicemail at any bank, insurance company or HMO?
Public employees took a beating in the Nov. 3 election, but the effect goes far beyond the passage or failure of a single proposition. The misguided animosity toward civil servants was heightened by the teachers’ unwise use of the word “bureaucrat” in their ill-advised collusion with anti-government conservatives. The latter knew what they were doing; the former were trapped into sacrificing principle for short-term gain.
Ralph E. Shaffer and Walter P. Coombs are professors emeriti at Cal Poly Pomona.
