In the early 1980s, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher emerged victorious from a war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands that propelled her to a landslide victory in the 1983 general election. On July 19, 1984, she gave a speech to the assembled legislators of her Conservative party, in which she said that she had defeated “the enemy without,” but that “the enemy within . . . is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.” She was referring to government-sector unions, and specifically the mineworkers’ union, which was then attempting to hold Britain hostage. (In Britain, the mines had been nationalized, hence their workers had a government-sector union.)
The union was able to attempt that because generations of socialist governments — including nominally Conservative ones — had increased the size and scope of the state and allowed the unions to acquire privileges that put them beyond the law. Today, with America’s prosperity already hobbled under the weight of bigger and more expansive government, we see that pattern replicating itself here. We must confront this enemy within before it crushes us.
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Like their British counterparts then, American government-union members today get paid more than the workers in the private sector, enjoy better benefits, and are increasingly exempt from laws that govern everyone else. These unions are bankrupting states with lavish pay and benefit costs.
Public-sector unionism is a relatively recent phenomenon in the United States. In 1959, Wisconsin became the first state to allow its public employees to unionize, and other states then followed suit. In 1962, Pres. John F. Kennedy issued an executive order allowing federal employees to join unions. Since then, union membership in the public sector has grown by leaps and bounds. In January of this year, for the first time, government-sector union membership was larger than union membership in the private sector. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 22.2 million government workers in the U.S. Almost 8 million of them are unionized, compared with only 7.4 million in the private sector. These unions are at the forefront of the movement for more expansive and expensive government. They use forced dues to lobby for greater pay and better benefits.
The Center for Responsive Politics lists the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) as second on its list of top all-time political donors. The Wall Street Journal has reported that AFSCME was the largest outside spender of the 2010 election. The 1.6-million-member organization spent almost $90 million — a stunning amount given that the union had only $97.4 million in assets in 2009. AFSCME was forced to use a $16 million emergency account and take out a $2 million loan to pay for its political activities. Before the election, Larry Scanlon, head of AFSCME’s political operations, reinforced the weight of the union’s political giving, saying: “We’re the big dog.” AFSCME president Gerald McEntee also commented on the size of the contributions: “We’re spending big. And we’re damn happy it’s big. And our members are damn happy it’s big — it’s their money.”
The National Education Association (NEA) is eighth on the all-time political-donors list, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is eleventh, and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) comes in at 13th. The NEA and AFT spent over $75 million on politics and lobbying in the 2009 fiscal year alone. In short, public-sector unions constitute a permanent, well-funded, self-supporting lobby for bigger government. The teachers’ unions’ investment paid off in August, when the House of Representatives prematurely reconvened to pass the Education Jobs Fund — which added $10 billion to the $53.5 billion Congress had already approved to bail out unionized teachers.
The problem, in my view, is not the wages and benefits costs of individual public sector employees. Especially on the state and local level I can trot out as much research saying they are underpaid as saying they are overpaid. The number of confounds in such analyses is enormous. To me the problem is the scope and intrusive nature of the modern American governmental model. If the scope of government was returned to where it was and should be the salaries and benefits of public sector employees would be less of an issue since there would be far far fewer of them.
Let me see if I follow this:
Some government unions are bad (viz., they do what they want, instead of what you want).
Therefore, all unions are bad.
Perhaps you might apply that same sophomoric analysis to Congress, private unions (like the UAW), religious sects, or even the public. How would the result be different?
Who did you propose to determine what is fair compensation for government employees - you?
Its easy to vilify Public Sector Unions and their members in hard economic times. Lest you forget these jobs are not the most popular ,to say the least, when times are good and folks are making big bucks in the high-flying private sector. The generous pensions and benefits are used as an incentive when no one wants to be a Cop, Firefighter, social Worker, Trash collector, or mind-numbing administrator.
In a free market, if workers do not organize how are they to protect themselves against possible abuses from better-positioned management?
In their early years, unions were a godsend. Over the decades I agree they have become an albatross around the neck of many US business (and our government). But what alternative do you propose?
Collective bargaining is simply good business on the part of the workers. A company looks out for itself and its stock holders (as it should). Business are designed to make a profit. Given this, the worker must have some way of asserting his/her needs.
Highly skilled workers probably do not need this protection. But assembly line workers, etc. who can easily be replaced have to have some way of keeping themselves above bare living conditions.
I often hear people (myself included at times) complaining about unions. But rarely do I hear any good suggestions to replace them. How do you propose your average blue collar worker protect his/her interest in the marketplace?
panic - name one good government union that exists solely for the benefit of the public and not the benefit of said union. I betcha ya can't...and that is the point. Unionizing public sector jobs is bad for the public, period. When dues are collected from these members and used for political gain, that's an overall bad deal for the people.
The Citizen's United ruling means that you can't take political contributions out of the equation, so if they are allowed to spend their memeber's dues to posture, then the best way to cut off their "special interest" is to kill them off by starving the beast.
Wow. I didn't know public sector unions could write their own contracts. Totally cool!
Wait - they can't.
They negotiate with the managers of the public entity, reach an agreement, and then that agreement is approved by the public entity's governing board.
Unions are merely doing their job - getting the maximum salary and benefits for their members. If those salaries and benefits are too generous, the blame falls squarely on the feckless politicians who approved them.
Obviously a lot of union members who are the exact people discussed in this article made it up early this morning to come and tell us that we're heartless far right taskmasters for not wanting them to get paid 40-60% more than us for the same or a lesser job.
God we're so evil for not wanting to make them all rich so they can treat us like peasants in public with their BMWs and Mercedes!!!
(What really proves that we're dealing with true evil here is how they don't even spend their looted treasure on American cars.)
By the way I'd say their logic holds up pretty well:
Premise 1: 80-95% of unions bloodsuck public funds and provide no real benefit to society outside of their own unions.
Premise 2: Private industry, while far from perfect, has a long and proven track record of doing better work than unions for cheaper (and we had a more robust middle class before unions completely took over).
Conclusion: At the very least members of the public sector should not be allowed to make more money than those who work in the private sector (which don't forget happens to pay the salaries of all those public employees).
My dad already had the answer to this one when I was a little boy..if Group A pays for Group B, then Group B can't get much bigger than Group A before the whole thing collapses!
When government unions are lock-step with a particular political party, especially one that represents socialistic/fascist like thinking, you have a problem. The title of the article makes this abundantly clear.
The states and their elected government officials keep finding a better use for the government worker's pension fund money and put off depositing the money into that account. Maybe we should elect more accountants and a few less unemployed attorneys? Accountants might be a bit less entertaining but I will take that over the stress of what those monkeys in office are doing now.
