James Joyner has some thoughts on news that the biggest spenders this election cycle are the public sector worker’s unions, noting that “surely, these people have every right to vote and to organize to elect candidates who will work to enact their views into public policy. But there is nonetheless something unsettling about having our employees organizing to extract more money from us.”
Indeed. The question of public sector compensation and how public sector unions influence elected officials is a tricky one. On the one hand, as Joyner notes, a lot of public sector workers perform really important functions – teachers, cops, firefighters, just to name a few – and we should compensate them well for their labor. But there really is something of a conflict of interest when the people who determine pay increases, benefits packages, and so forth were given a bunch of money and political support from the very people who will benefit from these things – and who would have been refused that support otherwise.
There’s no two ways about this. I want teachers to be paid very well, but I worry when powerful teachers unions have so much influence over an election that elected officials have no choice but to bow down to union demands, promising the moon and then offloading that promise on future generations. This can be the death knell for reforms and can seriously impact the ability of school districts to hire new teachers, or police forces to hire new cops. It creates perverse incentives in regard to performance, rewarding staying power more than enthusiasm or innovation, and creates entrenchment and reinforces good ol’ boy systems.
That being said, I understand why we have public sector unions. When your salary depends on the public whim, at least to some degree, that’s not a very secure livelihood. Teachers in most places in the country still don’t make enough money. Cops and firefighters work dangerous jobs and want some sort of security to balance that out against. But this does nothing to change the fact that there’s an ethical tightrope between elected officials and the unions they pander to out of political necessity, and it’s a tightrope we walk with a lot of taxpayer dollars hanging in the balance.
I do think this is going to be an issue for a long time, as the pension burden especially becomes harder and harder for the government to afford. Already in France and elsewhere clashes over unsustainable pensions are erupting. It’s only a matter of time before those same battles will need to take place in earnest here in America.
