Today, when a government (or public-sector) union protests or goes on strike, private sector unions cheer them on and support them in interviews and statements. That was not always the case. In In 1959, the AFL-CIO Executive Council had previously said “government workers have no right [to collectively bargain] beyond the authority to petition Congress—a right available to every citizen.” George Meany, the first chairman of that union, said that it was impossible for unions to bargain collectively with the government.
The reason for this was plain; the point behind unions was to give workers power to better their plight, to avoid abuse and exploitation by employers, and to get them more reasonable working hours, pay, and benefits. When the union leadership and members looked at government workers they saw people who were in no conceivable way being abused, ill treated, paid poorly, or exploited. They saw people who were doing pretty well.
While a private sector union is merely trying to increase the share of the profits it helps produce, a private sector has no profits, only taxpayer money. The basic idea of unions is to increase union member share of the profits it helps produce. But the private sector has no profits, only taxpayer money, and thus the share of profits is inapplicable.
Private sector unions such as the AFL-CIO are absolutely limited in their power and how far they can go by the nature of business but for public sector unions, that is simply not the case. Businesses can only earn a given amount based on what the market will bear and how well that company takes advantage of the market. Government earning is limited only by a theoretical maximum of total earnings of every citizen under it. There are always more taxes, and in the case of federal government money can always be printed and borrowed well beyond even the possible limits of taxation.
Today, the idea of public sector unions is pretty well established, but it shouldn’t be.
Such a structure by its very nature violates the basic principles of democracy and liberty. Unions measure their power by their ability to shut down the business its workers are employed at, which in this case is local, state, or federal government. Allowing workers to shut down government for better pay or benefits is something that no rational person can consider permissible or reasonable.
The public welfare and the very principle of representative government are put at risk and damaged by having workers able to shut down government and demand changes to policy to suit their whims.
Wisconsin is a perfect example of this danger; the protesting teacher’s unions and their Democrat allies shut down the government for weeks because they didn’t care for someone altering their pay and benefits. The will of the voters of Wisconsin is being defied by a small group of union workers.
When police were sent to evict people camping in the capitol building, some of the cops refused and even joined in. Why? Because they, too are part of a union, and that union solidarity trumped their commitment to law, their orders, and their duty as sworn officers of the law.
Where else will and do unionized government workers ignore their jobs, what they are told to do, and the law in favor of what their union wants? It doesn’t just have to be the police; fire departments, even bureaucrats filling out paperwork can all cause damage to the system in order to support their union or harm its enemies.
The trouble goes even deeper, though. The founding principle of a democratic republic is that citizens elect people who are accountable and represent their voters. Government unions, however, make these representatives accountable to other government employees by creating a powerful, rich, and influential special interest group that influences elections.
In practical terms, this means that public employee unions are the primary power structure behind the Democratic Party, supporting, electing, and assisting one political party while fighting the other. If that isn’t conflict of interest, I cannot imagine what is.
By using their money and power to help friendly politicians get elected, they then can benefit from these politicians — who are now beholden to them — to gain ever greater pay and benefits.
The result is that there is almost no theoretical limit to the maximum gain for public employee benefits beyond action from legislators and governors to pull back on this ever-gaining largess. Now, public employees enjoy far less average unemployment and greater pay on average than those in their field privately, and end up costing their employers far more as well. This is not merely theory, it reality which studies have found ample evidence of across America.
Public employee unions should never have been allowed in the first place, have never been necessary for government workers, and have been shown to be destructive to government and public treasury.
