John Sweeney, president of Big Labor (the AFL-CIO) and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, must have mixed emotions.
The bad news for him is that union membership as a percentage of the nation?s private sector work force peaked in the 1950s at about 40 percent and has dropped to less than 8 percent today.
But Sweeney?s good news is that labor unions now represent almost 40 percent of government workers ?and the number is expanding.
For many years, the AFL-CIO itself and union-friendly presidents opposed public sector unionism. But in 1978, Congress passed the Civil Service Reform Act.
Under this statute, federal government unions gained exclusive power to negotiate ? out of taxpayer earnings ? employee benefits and working conditions at the nation?s largest employer: the U.S. government. (About four out of every 10 Americans work for some form of government.)
?New Unionism? jeopardizes government freedom
Basically, when unions started losing members in the private sector, they turned to the public sector to win members and bolster their declining political clout.
The strategy worked. Unions? increasing prominence within the federal government, so-called “New Unionism,” paved the way to the “expansion of the size and scope of government, an ever larger role [for unions] in the formation of public policy, more control of taxpayers? money, and a diminished role of government sovereignty,” Dr. Leo Troy, Professor of Economics at Rutgers University said.
For example, President Clinton issued Executive Order No. 12871 in 1993. It decreed that: “The head of each [government] agency shall involve employees and their union representatives as full partners with management representatives to identify problems and solutions to better serve the agency?s customers and mission.”
Karl Marx could not have stated it better.
Fortunately, President Bush revoked this order upon taking office in 2001. But class warfare remains successful.
Public sector unions continue to negotiate “sweetheart” labor agreements with government executives who pass the cost of these inflated and non-productive workplace entitlements to their customers ? American taxpayers.
The incentive for leftist public officeholders to force their government agencies to “go union” is simple. Big Labor promises to give the politicians who “cooperate” with it vast sums of tax-free union membership dues dollars to finance their election campaigns.
Every year, this unreported problem worsens. Among unionized government workers across the United States (12 million in the federal work force alone) are hundreds of thousands of union supporters permanently embedded in second and third level government jobs.
They spin, twist and distort the laws they enforce to favor Big Labor?s goals.
?Maryland, My Maryland?
In cooperation with this Clintonian New Unionism, Democratic Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening, who held office from 1995 to 2002, unionized 75,000 state government employees with a few strokes of his executive pen.
It was his payback to the giant AFSCME union for helping to elect him twice.
Next, thisunique political action was legalized unanimously by the Court of Appeals, which disregarded contrary nationwide labor law precedent.
A year or so later, the state legislature legitimized his executive order by making it law.
When I testified on behalf of the State?s Chamber of Commerce and Maryland Business for Responsive Government before the legislature in opposition to this statute, these words were ridiculed and/or ignored: “Labor unions are drastically changing the way governments are administered and the entire public employment relationship, from recruitment to retirement. Experience has demonstrated that once a collective bargaining statute is enacted, there is no turning back from union collectivism ? with its inevitable adverse impact on government?s objectives, its budget, its productivity, its essential public services, its taxpayers, and its business climate.”
Samuel Cook is the author of the new book, “Freedom in the Workplace,” which chronicles the decline of private sector unionism and the growth of unionism in the public sector. Mr. Cook worked with hundreds of organizations on right to work issues from the start of the movement in the 1950s until he retired from Venable, Baetjer and Howard in 2001.
