Incentives Matter
6th December 2010
Megan McArdle kicks over a rock.
The source said it’s very common for someone with seniority to bid on escalators they know to be well maintained so they can slide and and not do anything for the six months it’s under their “care.”
“They can coast for a while,” the source said. “Then when problems start, they can move on,” leaving an ailing escalator under the supervision of someone with less experience.
This way of doing things, the source said, “destroys the incentive” of the younger workers who know that if they do a good job, their escalators will be taken away by someone with more seniority.
“There’s a culture in which you don’t really have to perform to keep your job,” they said.
It’s not always possible to foresee this sort of thing–I’m sure this scheme didn’t sound crazy when it was proposed. But clearly, it was a terrible idea that needs to be fixed. Unfortunately, when you’re in a collective bargaining situation–especially a government agency collective bargaining situation–it’s really, really difficult to change the bad rules. Workers will by now have come to see this as a perk of the job, and view any change to the system as a material loss for which they should be richly compensated.