~snip~
Even union icons such as George Meany, the legendary former president of the AFL-CIO, dismissed the workability of public sector unions as “impossible.”
And Sherk notes that other labor leaders were also skeptical.
“You had the AFL-CIO executive council in 1959 saying that, in terms of collective bargaining, government employees have the same right as every other citizen — to petition Congress for redress of grievances, but nothing beyond that,” he said.
And in Wisconsin, even the socialist mayor of Milwaukee in the 1950s, Frank Zeidler, opposed public sector unions.
He wrote that the rise of unions for government workers made it difficult for officials to protect taxpayers, warning that public sector unions “can mean considerable loss of control over the budget, and hence over tax rates.”
~snip~
In case you haven’t read FDR’s letter on public sector unions..