Tweedle Dum vs Tweedle Dee

Today's Boston Globe brings news of a lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston by NAGE (the National Association of Government Employees) against officials of the Massachusetts Department of Probation: 

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/07/06/probation_union_sues_over_hiring/. The Complaint alleges that Probation violated the law by hiring and promoting Probation employees based upon political considerations rather than merit. 

Both sides in this dispute deserve each other's throats.

On the one hand there is NAGE, a wholly superfluous public employee union whose reason for existence has been superseded by that vast panoply of civil service, anti-discrimination, civil rights, and workplace safety legislation that protects public employees in areas of hiring, wages, working conditions, job evaluation, job promotion and termination.

In fact, the term "public employee union" is well on its way to becoming a verb, whose various shades of meaning are as follows: 1. To stifle productivity or innovation; 2. To provide security for the mediocre; 3. To work inordinately slowly at a non-essential function; 4. To work in a desultory manner achieving lackluster results. Example: "My kids like to "public employee union" the chores I give them on Saturday morning."

As for the Department of Probation defendants, it could be that the political hires and promotions overseen by Team O’Brien actually resulted in the hiring and promotion of a superior personnel than those who would have been hired and promoted under the Procrustean criteria imposed by NAGE, criteria that tend to favor seniority and racially approved categories over strict merit. (Can you say U.S. Post Office? Can you say MBTA? Can you say RMV? How about DPW?)

But I doubt it. Like all the other encrustations of state government that have built up like barnacles on the Massachusetts ship of state over the years, the Department of Probation is a dumping ground for politically well-connected hacks and the churlishly incompetent.

If the lawyers representing the litigants on both sides of this dispute have a work ethic and skill set that is in any way representative of those whom they represent, presumably both sides will lose.