From The Residence of the US Ambassador to the OECD
Paris, France
Well, here I am. Paris. Been here for about 13 hours and (A) it has, in fact, drizzled all day and (B) no one has surrendered to me yet. But, I'll be here until Monday, so there's still time.
I have been invited to spend a couple of nights at the residence of Ambassador Jeanne Johnson Phillips and David Phillips here in Paris. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development provides for its 30 member countries, as its web site says, "an international organization helping governments tackle the economic, social and governance challenges of a globalized economy."
Ambassador Phillips, long-time Mullsters will remember, was the executive director of the Presidential
Inaugural Committee and was known to one and all as "JJ." (See "JJ Sez". She and David are wonderful hosts and are representing America's interests very well in a very difficult time.
As the U.S. Congress continues to bob up and down in the legislative waters on the economic stimulus package, an instructive set of articles were available to those of us who happened to be in Paris yesterday and read the papers.
One of the issues facing Congress is how much money should be provided so people can be hired by governments - local, state, and federal - using federal funds. As long as we are likely to run a federal deficit anyway,. and as most states have constitutional prohibitions against running deficits, the Democrats want to fund public service jobs at the local and state level using federal funds.
A pair of instructive articles appeared in the papers here yesterday which should provide guidance. One was in the form of an editorial in the European edition of the Wall Street Journal. It seems that the museum workers here - museum workers - are striking at first one museum then another on the issue of how many hours they should work per week.
Presently, museum workers - who are public employees and are unionized - work 35 hours per week. They want a new contract which will shorten their work week with no diminution in pay. Why? because other public employees are about to get a new contract which shortens THEIR workweek to 35 hours.
Museum workers, as the WSJ put it, won't be special any more. They want to have the shortest work week.
These are guys working at the Louvre. Not a foundry.
Here's another example. The union members who work at the largest government coin minting facility in France went on strike and refused to allow the shipment of millions of new Euro coins. The Euro is rolling out in December and will be the only form of currency by Spring.
The leader of the strike said that the union members chose this time to strike because they had the maximum leverage as the government would not want to risk a stormy roll-out of the Euro. As it turned out the cops went in and escorted trucks with the coins out, at which point the unionists went back to work. Their bargaining chip - the coins being held hostage - had rolled down the Rue de Hard Fromage.
The museum workers couldn't care less that tourism is a major source of revenue to businesses in the city of Paris; revenue which generates the tax money to pay the museum workers. On top of 9-11 tourist destinations are not exactly searching for new reasons to keep visitors away.
There isn't much to compare union workers in France with union workers in the U.S. However, it does point out that the dangers of allowing one leg of a three-legged stool: Labor, Management, and the Government to get too strong in relation to the other two.
But, it isn't too far a stretch to suggest that the 28,000 new federal employees hired to upgrade airport security will become union members and, while they aren't likely to strike, might tie up the entire air transport system next Thanksgiving by simply checking ... each ... and ... every ... bag ... very ... very ... carefully ... in ... the ... interests ... of ... passenger ... safety.
� 
