Public Sector In-Plants Get the Job Done

Two events are driving this rant. One involved a conversation with a commercial printer, who stated, and I think really believed, that public organizations, like state and local government, should not have in-plant printing operations. He said that he had tried to hire a couple of former state print shop employees and “they didn’t work out.” He seemed to think that all state employees were defined by his experience with these two. The other was a response I received to my observation about the absence of academic research supporting the argument that outsourcing the print shop reduced the cost of printing to the organization. In both cases, public employers were characterized as being lazy and non-productive. One even used the term “state worker mentality.” I couldn’t agree less!