The End Nears for a 50-Year Mistake (public sector unions)

In retrospect, there were two conspicuous giveaways that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was headed for victory in last week's recall election.

One was that the Democrats' campaign against him wound up focusing on just about everything but Walker's law limiting collective bargaining rights for government workers. Sixteen months ago, the Capitol building in Madison was besieged by rioting protesters hell-bent on blocking the changes by any means necessary. Union members and their supporters, incandescent with rage, likened Walker to Adolf Hitler and cheered as Democratic lawmakers fled the state in a bid to force the legislature to a standstill. Once the bill passed, unions and Democrats vowed revenge, and amassed a million signatures on recall petitions.

But the more voters saw of the law's effects, the more they liked it. Dozens of school districts reported millions in savings, most without resorting to layoffs. Property taxes fell. A $3.6 billion state budget deficit turned into a $154 million projected surplus. Walker's measures proved a tonic for the economy, and support for restoring the status quo ante faded -- even among Wisconsin Democrats. Long before Election Day, Democratic challenger Tom Barrett had all but dropped the issue of public-sector collective bargaining from his campaign to replace Walker.

The second harbinger was the plunge in public-employee union membership. The most important of Walker's reforms, the change Big Labor had fought most bitterly, was ending the automatic withholding of union dues. That made union membership a matter of choice, not compulsion -- and tens of thousands of government workers chose to toss their union cards. More than one-third of the American Federation of Teachers Wisconsin membership quit, reported The Wall Street Journal. At the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, one of the state's largest unions, the hemorrhaging was worse: AFSCME's Wisconsin rolls shrank by more than 34,000 over the past year, a 55 percent nose-dive.

Did government workers tear up their union cards solely because the union had lost its right to bargain collectively on their behalf? That's doubtful: Even under the new law, unions still negotiate over salaries. More likely, public-sector employees ditched their unions for the same reasons so many employees in the private sector -- which is now less than 7 percent unionized -- have done so. Many never wanted to join a union in the first place. Others were repelled by the authoritarian, belligerent, and left-wing political culture that entrenched unionism so often embodies.

Even before the votes in Wisconsin were cast, observed Michael Barone last week, Democrats and public-employee unions "had already lost the battle of ideas over the issue that sparked the recall." Their tantrums and slanders didn't just fail to intimidate Walker and Wisconsin lawmakers from reining in public-sector collective bargaining. They also gave the public a good hard look at what government unionism is apt to descend to. The past 16 months amounted to an extended seminar on the danger of combining collective bargaining with government jobs. Voters watched -- and learned.

There was a time when pro-labor political leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia regarded it as obvious that collective bargaining was incompatible with public employment. Even the legendary AFL-CIO leader George Meany once took it for granted that there could be no "right" to bargain collectively with the government.

When unions bargain with management in the private sector, both sides are contending for a share of the private profits that labor helps produce -- and both sides are constrained by the pressures of market discipline. Managers can't ignore the company's bottom line. Unions know that if they demand too much they may cost the company its competitive edge.

But when labor and management bargain in the public sector, they are divvying up public funds, not private profits. Government bureaucrats don't have to worry about losing business to their competitors; state agencies can't relocate to another part of the country. There is little incentive to hold down wages and benefits, since the taxpayers who will be picking up the tab have no seat at the table. On the other hand, government managers have a powerful motivation to yield to government unions: Union members vote, and their votes can be deployed to reward politicians who give them what they want -- or punish those who don't.

In 1959, when Wisconsin became the first state to enact a public-sector collective-bargaining law, it wasn't widely understood what the distorted incentives of government unionism would lead to. Five decades later, the wreckage is all around us. The privileges that come with government work -- hefty automatic pay raises, Cadillac pension plans, iron-clad job security, ultra-deluxe health insurance -- have in many cases grown outlandish and staggeringly unaffordable. What Keith Geiger, the former head of the National Education Association, once referred to as "our sledgehammer, the collective bargaining process," has wreaked havoc on state and municipal budgets nationwide.

Now, at long last, the pendulum has reversed. The 50-year mistake of public-sector unions is being corrected. Walker's victory is a heartening reminder that in a democracy, even the most entrenched bad ideas can sometimes be unentrenched. On, Wisconsin!

Jeff Jacoby

Jeff Jacoby is an Op-Ed writer for the Boston Globe, a radio political commentator, and a contributing columnist for Townhall.com.

From where does the government get the authority to speak for you or me to negotiate with a union made up of other government employees - who are hired expressly to provide services for the taxpayer?

Has the US Supreme Court ever ruled on the right of government unions to exist.

When unions bargain with management in the private sector, both sides are contending for a share of the private profits that labor helps produce -- and both sides are constrained by the pressures of market discipline.
But when labor and management bargain in the public sector, they are divvying up public funds, not private profits.

Key sentences - have been using something similar in every argument I have had. That "divvying up public funds" instead of "sharing private profits" are great terms to use.

Not grievances, it turns into a legal hassle. I think that the teachers could form professional organizations and get benefits like the NRA has.

At the time of the 50's and before, the NEA was an association of professionals, not a union. They were in a sense regulating themselves as medical doctors or lawyers or dentists did. The NEA was continually working with the states to improve the standards and quality of admission to, and conduct of, the profession.

In the village I lived, if a teacher was found in one of the local bars, or was found to be compromised morally or ethically, his/her employment was terminated, and employment in another district was improbable. Few people today can even begin to understand the civilizing effect that the teachers lent to the average town or small city then. Unionization of teachers wiped that effect out, IMHO.

"Where am I going wrong?"

You must realize that when someone has their hand in your pocket they don't care about your rights. Does a professional extortionist care about his victims' rights? All he cares about is his meal ticket.

It has always been a cornerstone of Western law that contracts signed under duress are unenforceable, but somehow unions, who always get their contracts through duress, are exempt from this just legal principle. It's only starting to end now because the victim is broke.

However, as we see in Wisconsin, unions are quite content to steal from the corpse. These people are vile, and deserve our utmost contempt.

From where does the government get the authority to speak for you or me to negotiate with a union made up of other government employees - who are hired expressly to provide services for the taxpayer?

I think the 10th Amendment answers that. If a power is not delegated to fedgov and is not otherwise repugnant to the Constitution, the states pretty much have a free hand.

Has the US Supreme Court ever ruled on the right of government unions to exist.

They must have, because according to the links in the main article, FDR actually said... on August 16, 1937

"Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."

Clearly, some time after 1937, there was a watershed change, either in the perception of political leadership, or in the laws prohibiting public employee unions.

However, as we see in Wisconsin, unions are quite content to steal from the corpse. These people are vile, and deserve our utmost contempt.

The scariest scene after Walker's vindication by the taxpayers was the "public" employee (male) who, with tears in his eyes announced, "tonight we have seen the end of democracy... *sniff*".
This thug was literally displaying his insanity --- can't be called anything else. Actually believing that "although all animals are equal, some are more equal than others," and that the pillaging of the public wealth for decades, was their "right."

Actually, 'scary' does not begin to describe it.

Unions, the certain refuge for the thugs, the inept, the incompetent and the parasite, glimpsed the end of the gravy train ------ and lost it.

In particular, the Constitution does not and should not prohibit a state from doing something stupid.

Only if they are obligated to fix the stupidity that they've created by themselves.

When all other states are expected to bail them out.....?

I don't think so!

“When it happens across the North East I’ll believe it.”

Christie’s election in NJ showed it IS happening; peple were being forced into foreclosure by property tax bills that were ridiculously high at a time when good jobs were fleeing (partly as a result of said taxes), and they reacted through the ones avenue left to them: the ballot box.

NJ won’t be hiring teachers in any numbers for years to come; those “on the job” are laughing all the way to the bank (and know they have no value in any other field), so they stay on forever (closing the field to new young parasites).

“What really brought the danger of public unions home to me was when Jenny Granholm started importing prison inmates from other states so union guards wouldn’t get laid off.”

I remember when that was proposed; I didn’t know it went through (I thought CA backed out from exporting its convicts). Since I figured Michigan was getting paid for it, I thought Granholm was simply trying to find a new niche for her state (since the auto thing had gone to the southeast).

I think the very existence of public sector unions will be a part of the 2012 campaign indeed. They really over played their hand in Madison, as I predicted they would. I am thrilled that well over 50% of the Wisconsin voters saw it that way.

I wasn’t sure Wisconsin would see it that way, but I thought the video’s of how those animals acted in Madison would make a huge impression in other states regardless. This is a cancer that needs to be radiated.

I'd support a small fee for employees to have an organization to represent them on grievances and to protect employee rights granted by law but limit it and get the organization representing them out of the political scene.

I can only speak to my own experience, so remember this is no claim to country-wide info.

I was forced to be in a union (formed on the Q-T years after I'd taken the job) to the point I received my two-week termination because I refused to sign a payroll deduction authorization. (To this day, I hate unions with a burning passion.)

Not a thing the union had to offer was new. Civil service laws already covered everything the union claimed to do. The only new thing was a conduit from our wallets to the democrat (*spit*) party.

Did I remember to say I hate unions?

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