Posted on 10/03/2017 9:47:17 AM PDT by Kaslin
Public sector unions. George Orwell would be proud of the term. Public sector really means government, and our government includes large levels of bureaucracy. So public sector unions are really alliances within bureaucracies, and they’re working against the interests of the general public with power that private unions don’t possess.
A chance is coming in the next year to start reining them in. In Janus vs. AFSCME, the U.S. Supreme Court will likely prohibit government employees from being forced to pay dues to unions whose politics they disagree with. These unions are almost entirely Leftist so they’re backing politicians a good part of their membership votes against.
As bad as that is, the fleecing of their members pales in comparison to their mugging of taxpayers through government employee pensions which are so lopsided that they’ve become a cause of municipal bankruptcies. To understand why, we just need to know of a crucial distinction between private and government unions.
In the private sector, the owners write the paychecks and pensions are limited to what the workers and the company put in and can afford. Since the monies paid in are a pre-determined amount or percentage, it’s known as a “defined contribution” plan. Not so on the government side, since whatever politicians promise in pensions (known as “defined benefit”) can be pulled from your pocket, despite the amount that the government worker contributed. And we taxpayers, the owners, don’t sign the checks, the politicians do. We’re just forced to pay the bill. It’s a deal between devils, the product of unethical legislators conspiring with unscrupulous union officials.
But it gets worse. The unions ask politicians for these unsustainable pensions, and the office-holders acquiesce, knowing that union members, often on taxpayer time, will work for their reelection. And before the consequences of these pensions hit, the politician will often be out on their own generous retirement plan. Meanwhile, the union’s dues are helping to finance campaigns and pay for ads for the ongoing and corrupt reelection bargain.
Since the union members and the politicians are both government employees, we have two factions of government colluding to defraud their true employer, the hard-working body of US citizens that funds the paychecks of both. And the union officials also get their salaries from the taxpayer, indirectly through the paychecks of union members.
This arrangement on a national level goes back only to 1962, when John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988, allowing “collective bargaining” for federal employees. Politicians soon turned this to their advantage.
No less a liberal icon than Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood and opined that public employee unions were an inherent conflict of interest. In 1937, he wrote, “All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.”
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unions formed as an effort to alleviate detrimental and dangerous working conditions. It was a struggle between ill-treated workers and often thuggish management whose goon squads would break up any attempts at organizing. But those private sector unions were so successful over the years, and working conditions in the U.S. are so good, that private workers who still pay union dues has dropped to single digits.
In contrast, around a third of government employees are unionized. The first step in reducing their power may soon take place through a U.S. Supreme Court decision. (It would likely have happened last year, but the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, left a similar case in a four to four tie.) Step two requires an understanding on the part of honest office holders of how the defined benefit system is unsustainable and that those pensions may need to be renegotiated so that they’re similar to pensions that prevail in the private sector.
We can only hope that it doesn’t take significant numbers of city, county, and even state bankruptcies to finally correct and avert this impending, foreseeable and largely ignored financial disaster.
“Civil Servants” aren’t servants at all, they are de facto superiors of the citizenry whose lives they regulate.
Their government union representatives, feel free to hijack compulsory union dues, promote socially destructive, sexually-radical policies, in the meantime, corrupting the political process that is supposed to regulate government employment.
The only solution is to politically disenfranchise public employees–deny them the vote. Let’s set up the brouhaha this invites, by contrasting some of the disadvantages with the advantages.
A large proportion of the electorate is in government employment. Arbitrarily denying political representation to such a large group, would invite its own set of abuses.
Why not emulate the French system, La Legion Etrangere, the French Foreign Legion, which gives elite privileges to foreigners–many with criminal backgrounds֫–but denies them any say in political decision making?
Sound somewhat familiar? We’re already at that stage. Legions of non-citizens, many of them grievously criminal, already tip the balance in national, Presidential elections.
Why not merely institutionalize the present status quo?
Guarantee civil servants yearly “cost-of-living” pay increases well beyond the rates granted to private sector workers.
Make it impossible for them to be fired; give them lifetime employment security.
Enhance their already considerable reputation for high-handed treatment of the powerless citizenry–the very definition of officious.
But to counterbalance those exorbitant benefits, deny them any say in political decision making, and take back your country.
Can we get Scott Walker for Labor Secretary?
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Potential Defunding of Public Sector Unions by the SCOTUS was why Judge Scalia was assassinated.
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Why FDR was against Public Employee Unions
>http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/why-fdr-was-against-public-employee-unions<
“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.”
Continued:
“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.”
you touched on a hot button of mine. Gov‘t employees voting.
I believe if one would parses the voting numbers; you’d discover that a majority of votes cast are those of gov’t employees or their families.
if you get your paycheck from the taxpayer - you can‘t vote
I'm tired of these silly conspiracies.
“Potential Defunding of Public Sector Unions by the SCOTUS was why Judge Scalia was assassinated.“
One of several reasons. I think the main reason was to give Obongo a chance to shift the court hard left for a decade at least. What better way then take out the best conservative on the court.
LOL. I’m tired of people who are tired of and label conspiracies “silly”, although some are silly while others are not.
IN GENERAL, the term “conspiracy theory” is often used to validate false explanations by discrediting true explanations.
“I’m tired of these silly conspiracies. “
The best conservative SC Justice is found dead in a Rat donors house with a pillow over his head no security, no autopsy not even an investigation. Yeah why think anything is fishy? /s
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The CTA case was the only reason!
It would have defunded the Democrat party, and the vote fraudsters almost completely. It also would have broken the CTA, and ended Democrat rule in California.
It was very possibly the most significant case to ever come before the SCOTUS, in that it would have so drastically altered political funding.
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>> “Are you saying without any proof that his widow and sons had him killed because they did not request an autopsy?” <<
Are you really that stupid, or are you doing this stunt for an audition?
His family knew to keep thir traps shut! They are aware of the ruling complex, and its cold mendacity.
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>> “I’m tired of these silly conspiracies.” <<
I’m tired of your empty-headed posts!
Familiarize yourself with the details of the case before making yourself look even more foolish.
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“Potential Defunding of Public Sector Unions by the SCOTUS was why Judge Scalia was assassinated.”
You are really into psychosis if you think that. He was an octogenerian in really bad health. He died. Not murder, natural death.
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About what I would expect from you!
Were he not feeling superb, he would have passed on the outing that day.
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“Were he not feeling superb, he would have passed on the outing that day.”
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Nonsense-——people die suddenly,it’s always been that way-——and always will be that way.
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Teen athletes die suddenly too, but they are not on the eve of demolishing the ugliest political machine that ever existed.
Pete Maravich at 54 said “I've never felt so good in my life” about a minute before dying of SCA.
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As a former member of the American Federation of Government Employees, I say get rid of public sector unions, for they protect rotten employees, AND, are now part of the hiring process for government jobs.
bkmk
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