NOT ACCOUNTABLE
Previous to George Floyd’s murder in May of 2020, officer Derek Chauvin received 18 complaints about his abuse of power—why wasn’t he terminated? Why are charter schools vastly out-performing public schools, when they’re spending a fraction of the price per-student? Why did Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a champion of private trade unions, feel the need to remind his constituency that “militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees?”
As Philip K. Howard explores in his polemic, Not Accountable, published in January of this year, the answer to these questions—and what Howard believes is the total moral and cultural degradation of the American government—is the public employee union.
Public employee unions have consolidated sufficient political power to effectively veto reforms they view as adverse to union initiatives. As of 2022, the number of people in the United States belonging to a public employee union counts at 7.1 million (an almost equal number to their private sector counterparts, at 7.2 million). It’s a significant voting bloc—one motivated enough to seat malleable civil servants in elected office, and demand that those executives fulfill certain demands should they wish to retain their seats. Howard summarizes the corrosive capabilities of public employee unions as follows:
1.) Public bargaining disempowers elected executives.
2.) Public sector bargaining preempts vital legislative responsibilities because it creates a powerful preference for union interests over other public interests.
3.) When there is a bargaining impasse, in many states and in the federal government, unelected arbitrators are making legislative choices.
4.) Sovereign authority is corroded by organized political activity by public unions.
Howard argues that public employee unions—though not elected to public office—have unwieldy political power. The outcome? Seizing democratic, electoral capacity away from the average, non-unionized voter and diverting the very objective governments are designed to achieve: the promotion of a common good.
“It is a story,” Howard writes (with a touch of melodrama), “of raw power and democratic disloyalty.”
Howard sets the stage for his manifesto by asserting that the only way forward is to liberate people to act on their best judgment, emphasizing the importance of allocating powers among different officials and branches—the basic framework for American governance, as constructed by the Constitution. However, he highlights how public employee unions have amassed enough political power to circumnavigate this framework, thereby leveraging a disproportionate influence to impede adversarial union reforms.
The fat cat gets fatter because it has learned how to cajole, over time, the hand that feeds it. “The abuse of power by public employee unions is the main story of public failure in America,” writes Howard, “worse even, I believe, than polarization or red tape.”
Not Accountable’s first few chapters delve into the historical progression of public employee unions’ influence—the civil service reforms of the Progressive Era, the legalization of public collective bargaining in the 1960s. Howard contends that over the past five decades, these unions have imposed restrictions on public managers, hindering accountability and enabling disgruntled individuals to disrupt decisions they disagree with. The micromanagement and expansive rights granted to public unions, according to Howard, have become integral to their control playbook, giving rise to their extortive power and similar disregard for the “nondelegation doctrine,” which more or less forbids the delegation of core, constitutional responsibilities to private groups in the name of protecting state sovereignty.
That history leads us to the current political quagmire. Instead of serving the common interest, public employee unions mobilize their power to rewire the inner workings of government to be conducive to their needs. Regardless of the party in power, government operations are unlikely to become more efficient, responsive, or functional due to the legal and constituent power exerted by the very public servants employed to serve them. Unaffordable pension funds become increasingly bloated. A hyper-stratification of contracted responsibilities slows down government responsiveness, and sows the seeds of distrust in the American public.
As our government grows (which it inevitably does), so too does the strength of public-sector unions. “American democracy,” as Howard points out, “is organized to make it difficult to repeal old laws.” Unions, year after year, administration after administration, have bargained effectively for their current stranglehold. You might think of it like a Chinese finger trap—the more legislative and legal pull you try to exert to get out of the thing, the tighter it hangs on.
Howard’s recommendation to quell the beast: a cultural reset. What the public sector needs, according to Not Accountable, is a resurgence of accountability so that fairness for the group is prioritized over the individual. How can it be, Howard rhetorically asks his reader, that public employee benefits are at an all time high, while morale is at an all time low? And then he answers his own question: Government is permeated on all sides by a spirit of fatalism, and a sense of futility. The exercise of human judgment is perceived as a liability, rather than an asset. And in a sector where Howard claims that 99% of employees receive a ‘fully successful’ rating—“there’s always a reason not to do what’s needed.” Why jeopardize a sure thing—why subvert the status quo—for the sake of your students or to expedite a new, fellow citizen’s Certificate of Naturalization when you have everything to lose and nothing to gain?
It is a culture of bare boned, what-about-me prerogatives. What the public sector needs, then, is people at all levels taking responsibility. Doing the right thing when no one’s watching—something that used to be called integrity. By book’s end, Howard proposes a radical solution: abolishing the union spoils system. He advocates for empowering leaders to make changes and enforce values of public purpose, urging employees at all levels to have a sense of ownership of the choices they make. He concedes that “the First Amendment allows everyone else to organize politically.” The chief difference, though, between public and private organizing interests is that “public employees, unlike all outside interest groups, have an ethical responsibility to serve the public, not negotiate against it.” Because at the end of the day, civil servants are just that—servants to a larger public that vests its collective trust in government to fulfill its duties as outlined by the Constitution.
In Not Accountable, Howard neither glorifies the good ole’ days of the past, nor invests undue hope in future administrations as pseudo-solutions for the failing that he believes are public employee unions. Howard’s call to action is an interpersonal one—a plea, from one American to the other, to put country before self, and to regard public service as a duty of privilege. Maybe that sounds familiar.
