Delivering the goods - trade unions and public sector reform

Public sector reform has found what many would see as unlikely champions, argues Brendan Martin - the public sector workers and their unions. Caricatured as bent on defending their power and privileges, they have in recent years come up with original and imaginative ideas on how to deliver high-quality, low-cost services. The key lies in trusting the front-line staff, and allowing them a lot more say in designing, and controlling their work. Not surprisingly, this has met with resistance from managers and politicians. Many of them are now showing that their real concern was political - a deep-rooted hostility to any form of collective provision - or financial - focusing on costs, rather than cost-effectiveness. Brendan Martin backs his case by looking at two rival models: the Tilburg model, based on a town council in the Netherlands, which turned a budget deficit into six annual surpluses by consulting and involving staff and unions; and the Lewisham model, based on the inner London borough of Lewisham, where the local authority earned awards for its clean streets, but at the price of mass lobbies, strike threats, and a soured industrial relations atmosphere. The Tilburg model is creaking now, as Brendan Martin concedes. But it, rather than the Lewisham approach, has pointed the way forward and has been developed by other local authorities in Europe. And he argues that it focuses attention on the real questions: how do we measure value in the public services? When we use those services, are we citizens or clients or customers? And how do we balance the three imperatives of keeping costs low, and quality and labour standards high?