but one that is somewhat unusual for me. I have no papers or tests to correct, my plans for the next two weeks are done - 9 days with the holiday, and then the first Semester is completed. This morning I will head to one of our high schools to help with those working on becoming National Board Certified - the woman who runs the program for our system was kind enough to find some extra work for me, knowing about the difficult financial straits in which I find myself, about which I wrote yesterday.
I have not been the only one writing about teachers and other public employees. We have had front pages stories about how public employees are paid less than the private sector, diaries about how public employees are under attack.
I have worked in the private sector, consulted to both government and the private sector, been an employee of a professional services firm who was assigned to work full-time in a federal agency, and been a local government employee in data processing as well as a school teacher. This morning I want to use my experience to offer a reflection on employment and employees in the public sector. I invite you to keep reading.
There is a basic distinction between employment in the private and public sectors. In the former the goal is to maximize the profit for the owner(s) of the firm. One may well be committed to producing the finest product or providing the most professional services, and occasionally - especially if the firm is not a publicly held corporation - the ownership may have sufficient integrity to be willing to forgo some opportunity for profit because of issue of professionalism, integrity, professional reputation.
When I worked for two software companies that had extensive client bases among government agencies as well as in the corporate sector, I would often be on site - training client personnel, solving problems with the software, installing new releases. I was not a commissioned sales person, but my job description included attempting to find additional opportunities for revenue with those firms - and through the professional networks to which I belonged - and my pay raises and bonuses could be affected thereby.
There were no bonuses per se when I worked for Arlington County's Office of Technology and Information Services for about 8.5 years. One could get merit awards or an additional step for extraordinary performance. We did not have much contact with the public, but rather helped other County agencies that did. In my time there I installed and customized a library information system and trained the librarians in its use, designed a new system for the Land Records function of the office of Clerk of Circuit Court, and maintained two ancient systems for key county agencies - The Dept. of Real Estate Assessments and the Utility Services Division's billing functions. I did other things as well, and had occasion to deal with county employees up to the level of heads of departments, elected officials such as the County Treasurer, Clerk of the Court, and Commissioner of Revenue.
There might be some at the top of those agencies headed by elected officials who were political appointees and perhaps not all that competent in the details of their departments, but that was actually pretty rare. The civil servants, even in those departments, were dedicated to the tasks that they had, and recognized the standard by which they would be judged was how well they served the citizens of Arlington County.
We were not paid starvation wages. But many if not most of us were paid less than we could have made in comparable jobs in the private sector. I was a computer professional, both a Certified Data Processor and a Certified Systems Professional (and now that I am a National Board Certified teacher I suppose you can say I am truly certifiable - but you knew that from my writing, didn't you/). I was a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Association for Systems Management, and twice an officer of the DC Chapter of the Data Processing Management Association. I knew people in the public and private sectors. I was reqularly offered jobs - for substantially more money than I was making at Arlington County. Similarly, when I consulted in data processing, on more than one occasion client companies inquired about hiring me - I can remember such inquiries from major corporations near Buffalo, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, and California. Government agencies also would inquire about my working for them. Thus I am well aware of pay scales, at least for data processing, in the federal and local government versus those in the private sector around the country. Trust me - government employees made far less.
Even so, what I made in data processing for the County dwarfed what I made when I began teaching. I went from 65,000 to 33,000. Granted, I was a very experienced data processor, with almost 20 years of experience, and a brand new teacher.
Then I look around at many of the teachers I know. Some have retired from other professions, and they have been able to begin teaching late in their careers. In our building we had one retired scientist from a government agency, in my department we have a retired lobbyist teaching government.
We have people with PH.D.s in Physics and Chemistry who could easily double their salaries by turning to the private sector.
Many of our younger teachers come from the teacher program at the University of Maryland, for which we are a key professional development school. I have in my 12 years at Eleanor Roosevelt had 5 student teachers from that program, 2 of whom later worked in our department. All were exceedingly good students, contrary to the tales that teachers come from the bottom of college classes. If I look at the current makeup of our department, out of 17 fulltime faculty, I believe it is now 5 that came from that program, one of whom is a graduate of our high school.
I think it is wrong to demonize anyone as part of a class. For what it is worth, that includes conservative Republicans and Evangelical Christians. I don't like when it is done to classes of which I am a part - I am a liberal, as a Quaker I am a pacifist, I am a teacher and teachers union leader, and - ohmigod - I am a blogger. I am also a unique individual, who should be judged on my own performance.
The same is true of my students. The same should be true of my fellow government employees - teachers, sanitation workers, clerks at the DMV, tax collectors, firemen, policemen, soldiers, food inspectors, and so on.
This nation is potential at a real cross-roads. If the rhetoric that is dominating much of the Republican side of debate wins out, we will destroy this nation. Truly. We will become an oligarchy, where the statement of Rand Paul that either you are rich or you work for the rich will be largely true - except for the millions who will be cast aside, with no work at all, and no social support systems. Who cares if they starve, or die early for lack of nutrition and health care? If they wander the streets as homeless we can lock them up at put them to work - INSOURCING - slave labor which is still allowed under the 13th Amendment as punishment for a "crime."
I will be 65 in May. I have lived through McCarthyism. I have also lived through a period of time when most of this nation had a conscience, where we saw the expansion of rights for minorities and women, where the American dream was broadened and deepened, where money was provided to go to college, where education and medical care were offered to those who lacked it because of the poverty of their communities and medical care and income security were offered to those in the shadows of life and the twilight of life, to use the language of Hubert Humphrey.
I remember clergy of all stripes marching for Civil Rights - Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Archbishop Iakovos, etc. I remember clergy being arrested for inequities in housing, or to oppose unnecessary wars, or in protest at the apartheid of South Africa.
Yes, there were clergy then who preached hate. But their voices did not dominate. Somehow, with the rise of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson we have accepted that such voices should be amplified in our politics. That legitimizes other kinds of discourse that should be troubling.
Too many in America are willing to demonize, to destroy others for their own benefit, whether that benefit is religious privilege, economic advantage, or political power. And too often the three are hopelessly entangled to the point that things like separation of church and state get crushed - for some that is a deliberate path to take.
Hobbes warned us about man in the state of nature. It was his argument for the need for a social contract. We might not approve of how he would have shaped that contract, but we would do well to pay attention to the cautions, which culminate in the famous line and the life of man: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
It is not just income level and wealth that is dropping for many Americans. For some so is life expectancy.
Absent the services that government provides without seeking a profit - because those most in need would cost the most, and not be served by a for-profit institution - life will become much nastier, much more brutish.
We certainly can examine what services government should provide and why. That is a debate worth having.
Accompanying that should also be a discussion of what our responsibility is to our fellow citizens, and an acknowledgment of how much many of wealth and power gain from the government - which is why I would argue they have a responsibility to support services which they claim do not benefit them. They are wrong, because when we lift up those in need the society as a whole benefits. Absent the New Deal would not this country have seen a far more vigorous Communist Party, as was the case in Europe, including in Catholic countries like France and Italy?
Government workers are us. They are our family, our friends, our neighbors. They reflect our society. Yes some are there for the security of the position. Folks, that is also why people used to go to work for a General Motors or a General Electric. That used to be part of the bargain of America, which included if you worked hard you would have secure employment, medical benefits, and a pension. That corporate America has largely abandoned its part of the bargain does not mean such was the correct path to go - what they have done has increased the inequity of the nation, and in the long term threatened their own viability as business entities - what happens when they no longer have sufficient customers?
In the 1950s, in a Republican administration, the executives of the major electric corporations went to jail for price-fixing. Now we demonized the oversight of corporations of all sorts, and the financial crimes they do are far worse, far more damaging to our fragile economy, and absolutely destructive of the hopes and dreams of many.
In the 1950s we had incremental tax rates of over 90%, and yet we built a middle class that enabled this nation to thrive.
In the 1950s we had a vigorous union movement, which even with the presence of the Taft-Hartley Act allowed the lifting up of the economic circumstances of those further down the economic pyramid even while those at the top continued to get rich.
Public employees are public servants. We are what you make us out to be. You attack us at your own risk, because absent public service there will be no public services. Absent public services this nation will increasingly become an inhospitable place for millions. Absent public servants, inequity will increase.
If you are fortunate enough to be born to wealth and power, or to ascend there by connections of religion, family, school and friendship, perhaps you won't care.
If you think you can ignore proper policing and hire your own security, say through Blackwater/Xe or similar firms, remember that the Roman Emperors who depended upon the Praetorian Guard eventually found themselves at the mercy of their armed help.
I am accused of writing too many diaries full of doom and gloom. I was asked yesterday why I don't write more about positive things.
I do. When appropriate. Like my 2nd period yesterday, when the principal came in for an informal observation, even some of my worst behaved students decided they wanted me to look good. That was nice.
So is the warmth of the cats that curl up with me when I sit or lie down.
But I cannot pretend that all is right in the world. I have a voice. I have some gift of words. I feel obligated to use them to try to make things better.
Now I will shower, and dress, and head off for my additional employment this morning.
Do with this what you will.
I sat, I thought, I wrote.
This is the result.
Peace?