Worker alienation cumulatively severed workers from championing client rights

Evidence

Thus the working conditions that give rise to alienation in work may cumulatively contribute to separating the client from the public service worker. This is significant since in earlier periods public service workers have often championed client rights and benefits. There have been times in American labor history when fledgling public service unions and worker associations bargained for clients as well as for themselves (social workers and teachers, for example). This struggle has become less important as the connection between workers and clients has dissipated. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 597

Categorization

• QUESTION: At what point historically did public service unions stop bargaining for clients? The modern era’s social worker and teacher unions bargaining primarily for members is an underexplored shift worth dating.
• XREF: connects to: Always-on work email isolates workers by removing fellow-worker support — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1882; Bureaucracies chronically underfund worker advocacy for clients, then punish contesting clients — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 547; Unsolvable client problems force street-level workers to develop coping mechanisms and alienation — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 586 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Administrative accountability practices erode workers’ client-responsibility and entrench service ineffectiveness over time #expands (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1288
• Restructuring job incentives and stresses can change workers’ client attitudes #corroborates (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1050
• Work discretion and human variety partly counteract alienation and sustain agency fealty #complicates (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 567