For many policymakers, administrators, and conservative policy wonks, it has long been a foregone conclusion that privatization of public services generates efficiency and saves taxpayers money. Throughout the United States, countless private firms already operate prisons, disperse child-support payments, administer public-assistance programs, and serve school lunches. Now, however, private-sector business strategies such as outsourcing and offshoring are adding momentum to the push for a businessoriented approach to public enterprise.The conventional wisdom is that public administration lacks the decisionmaking capacity of the private sector and therefore wastes economic resources. But the source of that belief can be traced to overly simple budget analyses that rarely consider alternatives to privatization. More sophisticated analyses reveal the hidden costs of privatization, the ability of public-sector employees to achieve work and service improvements, and the public’s expectation of work done responsibly and with accountability.The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA), representing 36,000 state workers, is at the forefront of a counter-movement to expose the perils of privatization and to articulate proven alternatives. Its approach is to expand the role of public workers in decision making by engaging the employer in a dialogue (voluntarily or involuntarily) using comprehensive cost-comparison analyses and labor-management collaborations. OCSEA undertakes a variety of approaches to counter the privatization movement, including collective bargaining, joint labor- management projects, “contracting in,” education and mobilization, public campaigns, and organizing. Through these initiatives, OCSEA is successfully proposing alternatives to privatization that not only support the public delivery of goods and services but also raise the bar in the state’s make/buy decision.
