Worker political gains came at the expense of client-oriented service

Evidence

Like other organizations, street-level bureaucracies are always constrained by resource limitations. However, it is important to understand that this constraint is experienced as a source of tension within street-level bureaucracies at the operational level. Street-level bureaucrats must find a way to resolve the incompatible orientations toward client-centered practice on the one hand and expedient and efficient practice on the other. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 363 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Civil service and other developments have made worker recruitment more universalistic. This development may also have affected the extent to which workers are able to help clients and see the results of their efforts because treatment of clients has also become more universalistic. Congruity between the social background of workers and clients does not have the same place in public service interactions as it used to. The fabled paternalism of social workers and school teachers in the past may have functioned to give street-level bureaucrats a sense of responsibility and reward for outcomes, even if these gratifications were founded on inequalities and favoritism. Thus the bureaucratization of public service may have been accompanied by increased worker alienation. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 595 (#expands, via linked claim)

In recent years public employees have benefitted considerably from the growth of public spending on street-level bureaucracies. 12 Salaries have increased from inadequate to respectable and even desirable. Meanwhile, public employees, with street-level bureaucrats in the lead, have secured unprecedented control over their work environments through the development of unions and union-like associations. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 96 (#pays-off, via linked claim)

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Street-level bureaucrats won unprecedented control over their own working conditions through unions. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 96; More staff cannot fix client processing if core working conditions stay unchanged — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 303; Mass-processing management displaces the client-orientation goals that justify agencies. (+4 more)

Related

• Bureaucratization eroded the paternalism that once rewarded frontline workers (similarity 0.86)
• Public workers since 1960 traded client advocacy for higher pay and bargaining power (similarity 0.86)
• Street-level bureaucrats are frontline workers exercising substantial job discretion (similarity 0.83)
• More staff cannot fix client processing if core working conditions stay unchanged (similarity 0.82)
• Street-level bureaucrats won unprecedented control over their own working conditions through unions. (similarity 0.81)
• Frontline workers feel resource scarcity as a lived tension between client care and efficiency (similarity 0.80)
• Mass-processing management displaces the client-orientation goals that justify agencies. (similarity 0.78)
• Selective coaching of clients redistributes benefits away from the uncoached (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Frontline workers feel resource scarcity as a lived tension between client care and efficiency #exemplifies (0.78) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 363
• Bureaucratization eroded the paternalism that once rewarded frontline workers #expands (0.72) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 595