That's the term for a recession-induced, recession-prolonging piece of extended patronage being considered by the power-conscious but economically illiterate Denver City Council.
According to the Denver Post, the City Council is considering enacting so-called "worker retention" laws for city contracts:
Now Nevitt and eight other members of the 13-member City Council say they want to extend "worker retention" for all service contracts for the city and airport.Firing workers just because a new contractor comes on the scene is "both inefficient from an operational perspective, expensive from a budget perspective and cruel from a personnel perspective," Nevitt said.
Oh-for-three. There's no particular reason to think it's inefficient operationally: if the duties performed are routine, the new, winning bid may in fact derive from operational efficiencies. It's less expensive by definition, as the winning bid by a new company must be, by definition, lower than the incumbent's bid. As while nobody wants to see anyone else lose his job, where's the kindness in leaving the winner's employees on unemployment?
It's perfect reasonable for people to seek security in this economy. You think I'm not worried about my job, too? But pressure to keep wages high was one of the chief factors in the New Deal's prolonging of the Depression, and this bill would do nothing if not keep wages artificially high.
Finally, this basically extends permanent job security from direct city employees to city contractors, in effect creating an entirely new patronage class dependent on the largess of city budgets.