>* In the United States, public-sector workers are essentially
>service workers rather than industrial workers, which also impacts
>how the public see workers' actions (for instance, seeing them in
>terms of their impacts on public service recipients).
Are you making an objective distinction?
>* Wages for public-sector workers come from tax revenues, while
>wages for private-sector workers come from profits, which leaves
>different subjective impressions as well as objective impacts on the
>public.
All wages are paid from profits. Wages for public service workers are met out of tax revenues, but tax revenues are first deducted from profits. Again, I can see the subjective distinction, but it only exists where people falsely believe that taxes can derive from some other source than profits.
>* State and local governments by law may not run deficits. During a
>severe recession, state and local governments are almost compelled
>to cut services unless the public succeed in forcing the federal
>government to extend financial assistance to state and local
>governments.
>
>* When police officers and prison guards are more unionized than
>other workers, more resources are spent on state repression of the
>working class than on services such as education and health care
>that benefit the working class: e.g., "CCPOA [California
>Correctional Peace Officers Association] political activity exceeds
>that of other labor unions.
This is putting the cart before the horse. The premise for saying that higher wages for some public servants is at the expense of others and/or at the expense of other services, is that there is some objective limit to revenue. But of course governments have the power to raise more taxes to pay for more services. Even if in this instance they cannot run deficits.
>* Trade union struggles of public-sector workers, who don't produce
>surplus values (though they contribute to creating conditions for
>surplus value extraction), don't have the same immediate impact on
>the capitalist bottom line as trade union struggles of
>private-sector workers.
Where is the assertion that government employees "don't produce surplus values" coming from? They create value, therefor it is likely that they create surplus value, unless there is some mystical reason why government employees can always be assured that they will receive the full value of their labour in wages. (But if the latter is the case, then they would have no need for a union, because they are already guaranteed maximum return for their labour.)
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas