Two items to discuss here - first the one referenced in this title.
Governing Magazine's Management Insights column features a piece written by long-time public sector employee/current president of the William Penn Foundation Feather Houstoun. (Full disclosure: The Next Mayor project is made possible by a grant from the William Penn Foundation.)
In this column, Houstoun discusses the fact that as the current boomer population ages out of the workforce, the public sector will lose a good amount of its own workers. These jobs will be filled with a generation that has come to have far different career goals and career paths than their predecessors had:
Research and anecdotal experiences suggest the incoming workforce will be less hierarchical, more entrepreneurial, more likely to move from one job to the other, more accustomed to working in teams, and more technologically skilled.
One cannot help but be struck by how out of touch with contemporary workplace expectations the public sector often is. We want to attract smart, agile knowledge workers, but offer them rigid hiring processes and a non-portable pension that optimizes after a lifetime career.
I wonder if this applies to Philadelphia's municipal workforce, a place where people have gone (aside from a higher calling to serve the public) precisely because of the stability afforded by a lifelong job and secure retirement benefits. If, as Houstoun says, the next generation of city workers is more likely to be looking to jump from job to job and therefore require more portable retirement benefits, then perhaps it could be time for the city to get the unions to agree to one of PICA's suggestions for managing pension costs (p. 9):
Under a defined contribution plan, the City would no longer bear that market risk. Eligible retirees would be responsible for investing so that they would get the benefit of strong earnings, but also shoulder the risk of weak earnings. In order to help employees minimize their investment risk, the City should offer the best available investment counseling if it moves to a defined contribution plan.
It'll be interesting to see if this gets any mention during the upcoming negotiations.
Item two:
Speaking of budget-straining employee benefits, you may have missed it in Saturday's Daily News, but the city has decided not to appeal an arbitrator's decision to give the fire fire fighter's union a 45% increase in health-care contributions. Just in time for the next round of contract negotiations.