Saturday, September 29, 2012

Talent, labor, and essential services

 So......would you be a non-unionized police officer in Camden?   Would you trust one to treat you fairly?  (see both these links  here too)

Talent, labor, and capital.  If a job can be done by anyone, then wages are held down.  If it takes talent, then wages tend to be high.  How do you police a city like Camden?  By labor or talent?  

2 comments:

  1. I think that a big problem with the city of Camden is that on any given day 30% of its scheduled police force do not show up for work. They clearly are in need of more labor. I'm not sure how much talent is required for the police force but it would help to have a larger force because there is strength in numbers, especially when it comes to patrolling. Also having a police force that is not corrupt would help out a great deal. The officers need to be able to trust one another and know that they will be covered by their co-workers, so if there is a lot of corruption the 'good' officers can't do much to help either. In regards to the NFL lockout I think it comes down to the talent of the referees. The replacement refs weren't cutting it and the NFL has enough extra money to fix the problem relatively easily in comparison to the Camden police force.

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  2. I agree with Beth in saying that there is a huge strength in numbers, especially for police officers. The article mentioned regionalizing the police force, but were worried about the response rate. Considering that 30% of officers do not show up, and the ones that do are being so overloaded that they are not responding to property theft or accidents, response rate could improve with adding more workers. These added police officers would need to be better at their job, so I can where the talent aspect fits in, but is that talent? Or just their duty as a police officer, to at least show up and try to do their job. “If you add police, it will give us a fighting chance,” Mr. Leonard said. “People need a fighting chance.”

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