Hi All, For what it is worth, I will contribute to the subject. This email seems to be the shortest to reply to, but I have read the others. As the others I have my personal opinion on this, and will bring in Quality.
We have had input concerning responsibility (or not) of the employees for the current state of affairs. We also have opinions on honoring past contracts. It would appear that what such opinions are demanding is Security in this world we live in. Indeed, that is the promise of many politicians. The false promise of security is indeed at the core of many who seek power. So, let's look into this Security and its relationship to Quality. In all agencies that provide for employment and paychecks, such rewards require that the agency has solvency. In the case of a private company which goes bankrupt (I mean really bankrupt), the employees are left without any income, and often the company pensions are lost. In this present case we are discussing the employer as a government entity, which means that the general public is providing the finances. The promise is that such an agency is immune to the insecurity created by economic forces or other negative problems. The counter argument is, of course, why should a government employee have any more security than people outside the government. Why should "promised" pensions in the form of contracts be held at a higher level than such contracts for others? In terms of the pressures of Quality, that is the perception of Arete, what does it say? We can certainly feel that more security in this life can be translated into higher Quality. But is this true? It is often seen that in periods of serious insecurity such as times of war, the highest personal quality is brjought out. People rise to the occassion, and values of high quality are shown, such as selflessness and compassion. A country which is highly secure and predictable may indeed enter into levels of low Quality and complacency. Personal quality is not necessarily a reflection of the standard of living of a country, and indeed there may be an inverse relationship. So the notion that a contract must be observed no matter what the cost, may not present as high a Quality as one would think. For the populace of many to atone for the mistakes of a few is indeed a social attribute, but such complicity may indeed enable the fiscal imprudence of such a government, and not result in any Quality at all. That a goverment employee should feel that a promise which was made (in better times) is irrevocable points to low quality on the empolyee's side, and points more to abuse of the trust of the people financing him/her. It is of course a balancing act between security and reality. Cheers, Mark On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 4:06 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > 2 issues are getting confused here (though they have basically the same > solution) :1) Wisconsin legislators have fled the state rather than serve. > They can be compelled to serve only by Wisconsin state police, which have no > jurisdiction in another state. > The solution here is to remove from office any > legislator who refuses to serve. > 2) Fiscal irresponsibility has led to a pension crisis for public servants. > As Horse has said,past contracts must be upheld. The question iswhat to do > about future contracts. The solution is not to deny collective bargaining to > public servants. Collective bargaining works to assure that those doing the > same work receive the same pay. The solution is to make future contracts > affordable. This might require replacing public servants who strike. > Craig > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
