(Great job expanding Jeff Crosby’s list of 5 key things that public employee union members need to do into 5 things we all need to do to fight for the public good, i.e., the good of all. – promoted by eli_beckerman)

Jeff Crosby of IUE-CWA Local 201 in Lynn, Massachusetts has written an insightful post on the abandonment and demonization of both the public sector and the public good by our own legislative leaders.

http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/04…

He proposes union rank and file take 5 steps to better “protect both public workers’ living standards and public services for the rest of us” — should be all of us there, Jeff! — but in my opinion, these are 5 principles we all need to adopt. As Jeff notes,

Either we change the public perception of government-equating the public sector with the public good with each word we speak-or we lose public jobs and services. And that hurts us all.

1. Tell our story, Make it Personal

talk about the individuals in local public service we all depend on. Paula, our school librarian, who rescued 1000 books headed for the dumpster when the state killed the regional library system because she would need them when helping kids with their research reports.   Bob, our kid’s 8th grade history teacher who set up an exchange program with Dutch, German and Russian school kids on his own time and has accompanied our school kids on visits to Anne Frank House and Auschwitz and exchanges to Europe to see a world where children bicycle to school to save energy. And Bill, who is up at 3 AM to fix the town water system after the pump has been struck by lightning, because we depend on public employees to provide the public services that serve the public good. Every one of those stories is true, and those are just from my home town. Jeff Crosby tells his own, at the beginning of his piece.

2. Avoid Abusive Practices

hold ourselves to a higher standard. Good enough for government work has to be the best we have to offer. Every public employee and elected official is the face of government. No one has the right to waste the taxes we pay for the public good.   Nuff said.

3. Fight public corruption

An “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” approach to politics leads to poor public service and lack of public support, and is never defensible. as Jeff Crosby notes,

The last three speakers of the House in Massachusetts have all been indicted-two convicted, and counting. All “our guys” who received union support over the years [and…] the public often sees the unions as in cahoots with corrupt elected officials.

It is no secret that unions have relied heavily on support from Democrats, and in turn, have been tempted to keep silent on corrupt and abusive practices by elected officials who were supporters. What Jeff argues here is that it was never a good strategy, and is no longer even a working one!

Breaking with the “see no evil” approach isn’t easy, since state officials are often the same people the unions have relied on for decades to protect them. The library board appointee I mentioned above was the wife of a former Democratic state representative. A mutual protection pact was never a good strategy, and at this point it obviously doesn’t work.

4. Talking Taxes (and Tax Giveaways)

Here Jeff takes up a theme that both unions and Green-Rainbow Party candidates like myself have been advancing for a long time, but independently and ineffectively. Time to work together!

It seems like hardly a day goes by without another exposure of corporate tax rip-offs, which create none of the promised jobs, often next to a story about the state’s budget crisis or crumbling infrastructure.

Time for a more progressive state tax structure to stop stealing from the poor to subsidize the rich and to save services and jobs, but the first step must be to end the giveaways that drain our state of needed funds before we even get around to funding our cities, towns, and schools.

5. Rely on Our Members and Fight

You can’t rely on the press to do your work for you. Papers are not public services! There’s no requirement that the press be fair and accurate in its reporting, or even cover your point of view at all in a way that informs the public, “we report, you decide” to the contrary. There’s only the integrity of individual reporters, and their employers are not elected. As Eli Beckerman often puts it, we have to “be the media.”

I hear union leaders complain all the time that the major papers won’t carry their side of the story. No kidding.

Sound familiar?

What may not sound so familiar is what Jeff has to say about the formerly time-honored practice of union support for Democratic Party incumbents as a substitute for directly advocating for public service and the public good:

the old model of sending checks to elected officials who will vote our way no longer works, not in this era of state and local budget crises, pension fund losses and surging medical costs.

Time to speak clearly, and directly, to the public, on terms that matter to everyone.

It astonishes me that the idea that public dollars should be spent on public services for the public good has become a radical idea among our elected officials, something lower in priority than subsidizing private industries with public funds.

Want to change the public perception of government? Want to actually improve the public good? Want to have the funds for the public services needed to achieve that?

Expose the waste of public funds on private sector giveaways that drain our cities, towns, and schools of the services we rely on and that our governments now struggle to provide. Demand that public $ be spend on public services for the benefit of all. Demand, when it comes time to raise those public $, that we stop asking ever more from the poor and ever less from the rich, a practice that is both indefensible and ineffective! And finally, be the people and the party willing to run against incumbents to make that happen, or they never have to listen.

Your thoughts?