Although employees are at the core of the emotionally charged anti-privatization argument, they often stand to benefit the most from privatization. This is because they are impacted the most, and are pivotal to the success of any privatization contract.
Before a municipality contracts with a private company to run its wastewater facility, it should work with the private company to evaluate how privatization will affect current wastewater plant employees. Any reduction in staff or changes in benefits or job positions should be a part of contract negotiations. Usually when a wastewater plant is privatized, the employees receive equal or better pay and benefits, and no lay-offs without cause for the full length of the contract. Private companies usually use attrition and transfers as the primary means for reducing the work force over a period of time.
From the experience and knowledge gained working with other municipalities, private companies are able to pass along to a municipality's employees advanced training and education, resulting in greater efficiencies and quality for the municipality's services. This translates into better-run, more efficient and environmentally sound facilities for the community. From the employee's standpoint, private companies provide improved compensation plans and opportunities for professional growth, including fully paid medical and dental insurance, pension plan vesting, performance bonuses and opportunities for advancement.
The private sector also has available to it a virtual arsenal of ways to motivate and reward employees. Incentives such as bonuses and career opportunities often are not feasible within the constraints of a municipal environment. Municipal employees are limited in where they can work and the number of jobs available. With a private company, an employee can commute to a facility the company manages in a nearby community, transfer to another location, remain with the same company without losing any benefits or vesting and cross-train to work at either a municipal water facility or an industrial wastewater plant.
Therefore, when a private company begins operating a wastewater plant, there are more ways to entice and reward employees. This changes the way employees look at the value of the work they perform as individuals and as a team. When employees know the ideas they come up with to improve operations or save money will be recognized, they develop a new sense of worth and a new way of looking at the multimillion dollar facilities they manage. In addition, when they're rewarded for the ideas that are implemented and the resulting improvements or savings, they generate even more ideas. Although employment usually is subject to a drug screening, a private firm selected to manage a municipal wastewater system generally brings on all full-time employees on the first day of the contract.