FPE/AFT renews commitment to fighting privatization at 2001 conference 

The theme of the 2001 FPE/AFT national conference, "Public Trust, Public Pride," was more than a celebration of the hard-working men and women who provide the services that are the foundation of our democracy.

It was a rallying call to preserve from privatization the institutions of government that build, regulate, serve and protect. It was, as FPE/AFT program and policy council chair Jim McGarvey said at the conference's opening, "a theme that speaks to the fact that public employees carry out the public trust."

During the three-day conference May 11-13 in Detroit, participants attended workshops on subjects ranging from recruitment and retention to negotiating health care and other health and safety benefits to what is happening in the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Congress. But the recurring topic during the general sessions was privatization.

A chorus of speakers, including McGarvey, AFT secretary-treasurer Edward J. McElroy, and FPE/AFT department director Steve Porter, beckoned the nearly 300 union members attending to move the debate about privatization away from cost and efficiency issues to a debate focused on quality public services that are valued--and relied upon--by the majority of working Americans.

"When you are in our line of work, you have to ask, 'What kind of society do I want to live in?'" asked McElroy, noting that the answer to efficiency and good service is adequate resources, not privatization and the selling off of public values.

When Michigan Rep. David Bonior, a Democrat, addressed the FPE/AFT activists during a Saturday morning session, he put the privatization debate in perspective. "It's not hard to understand what makes privatization so appealing to men like George Bush and the people around him. Just look at the world they come from," Bonior said. "It's a world where people send their kids to private schools, not public schools. It's a world where people live in gated communities with private security guards, not neighborhoods with city police. It's a world where people go swimming or golfing at country clubs, not public parks. If you grow up and you live in that kind of world, public services are something other people use."
 

A Political Movement?

Despite rhetoric from privatization proponents that the contracting out of government services is smart economics, a number of economists maintain that privatization is a "political movement" and that privatization and deregulation are the logical extensions of capitalism.

Elliott Sclar, a Columbia University professor and one of the leading authorities on privatization, said "privatization advocates seek to shrink the role of government in the regulation of society in general and the distribution of income in particular. They want to replace civic decision making with market solutions to society's problems."

The result, he says, "older, established social groups can withdraw from a civic discourse with newer and poorer multi-ethnic neighbors by privatizing services."

It is an approach McElroy called: "Hooray for me. The hell with you."

"It is an attitude that people of lower income don't count," said Mary Ann Mahaffey, president pro tem of the Detroit City Council.

"Unless the public mission is fully understood, contracting stands a large risk of creating the wrong product," Sclar said.

Echoing his sentiment, Mildred Warner, assistant professor at Cornell University, pointed to the contrasting missions of business and government. Companies run on efficiency and profitability, she said, while public services "must focus on stability and quality for the long term."
 

Mobilization

"All the challenges public employees faced under [the] last four presidents could easily pale compared to what we can expect from this one," said Bonior, who, as Democratic whip, is one of the most powerful members of Congress. "Because while other presidents may have been contemptuous of public employees and their unions, George Bush has something more: A Republican-controlled Congress on his side that may be even more hostile to public workers than he is."

"In the final analysis, what's going to win this battle is your success building support for public employees at the grassroots," Bonior said.

Building coalitions and educating the public about the underlying threat privatization of public services poses to the nation's democratic systems and the public values held by the majority of Americans--the working and middle classes--is the only way to compete with lawmakers whose bottom line is profit.

"We need to coordinate our actions because we've made a difference in the past and we can do it again," said Mahaffey, with a fighting spirit charging her voice. "Politicians begin to pay a little attention when they receive 100 letters, 500 letters or a 1,000 letters because they worry about reelection."