In Hard Times, Public Workers Are Endangered Species

I was sure John Wyrough would have trembling hands, sunken eyes and fingernails bitten to the nub. As a cruel joke, I considered sneaking up behind him and instead of saying, “Boo!” saying, “Privatize!”

I assumed that Wyrough, as the executive director of a public employees union, would recoil at the mere sound of the word. Everywhere, it seems, people are talking about replacing government workers with private industry, all in the name of saving money. The public’s general dissatisfaction with government, borne out by almost any poll, inevitably spills onto public employees. Many see the public sector as bloated and lazy, the private sector as lean and mean.

The Philadelphia mayor has won plaudits for his privatizing efforts. The young Jersey City, N.J., mayor is being hailed as a rising political star for the same reason. Closer to home, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan often discussed contracting out functions now performed by municipal employees at the airport and harbor. And locally, Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez has carried the ball on trying to expand privatization.

Almost every city in Orange County is privatizing to some degree. Services contracted out range from the mundane, such as waste disposal and landscaping, to the more exotic, such as graffiti removal. Privatization is even more popular in South County, with virtually all city employees, from attorney to engineer to software programmer, on contract.

So, Mr. Wyrough, why aren’t you panicking?

Turns out he’s a little too cool for that. Besides, while privatization may strike many taxpayers and elected officials as The Next Great Idea, Wyrough said the buzz you hear is merely another verse to an old song.

“I don’t want to minimize the issue,” he said, as he sat at his desk at union headquarters near downtown Los Angeles, “but it’s not shocking to me that the subject would come up, especially right now. In fact, anybody who has been looking over the last 20 to 30 years would assume the subject would come up, because of the economy.”

Wyrough is the regional head of the giant public employees union known as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents a couple thousand workers in Orange County. It is that union’s members who should be cringing as the talk of privatizing government services gets more and more attention.

“What happens,” Wyrough said, “is that when public budgets get tight, when times are hard and sales tax revenues and real estate tax revenues decrease and surpluses get eaten up, politicians look for quick fixes. They look for ways to show short-term savings and most of the time you can do that if you take a particular public service and put it up for bid.

“You attract people who want business. In order to get a foot in the door, in order to build a relationship, to have access to the money flow that could be available with government contracts, contractors will come in with unrealistically low bids. What you can then do if you’re a public official is show savings in that budget year, sometimes significant savings.”

What the union would argue, he said, is that a private company will attempt to recoup losses in subsequent years, by which time it may be too entrenched to be plausibly replaced by another firm or have the service revert to the public sector.

Most of Wyrough’s focus is on Los Angeles, where the union sees Mayor Riordan as a direct threat to some of its 7,000 members. Orange County is a lesser concern, although, Wyrough said, “what happens in L.A. sets the pattern for the region. The election of this mayor (Riordan) who ran on a platform that at least discussed the sale--in effect the contracting out of the airport and the harbor. If those plans go forward, that would provide a precedent and encouragement to Orange County supervisors, to San Diego supervisors, San Bernardino supervisors, to take a closer look at that sort of thing.”

Wyrough’s union represents about 1,200 workers in Orange County’s Social Services Department. Those employees don’t appear threatened with any privatization efforts, he said. The union also represents another 1,000 workers in various other governmental jobs in the county.

While disputing that there’s a privatizing “movement” afoot, Wyrough expects to see more such efforts. “Clearly, there is a deep-seated sense in the public mind that something is wrong with government. Something is wrong with the traditional way we’ve elected leaders, with the traditional political parties and there’s a great deal of dissatisfaction with that. . . . Contracting out is a subheading of that discussion. Because what happens is (people say) there is something wrong with government, so let’s look outside government to solve our problems.”

Public employees are bucking an angry citizenry and nervous elected officials. Can the employees persuade officials that they can do the job as well and as cheaply as private companies?

If they can’t, Wyrough may yet take on the look of a very worried man, indeed.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.