Unions v. America

• There has never been a valid reason for courts to allow unions, uniquely, to be free from the consequences of violence and mob behavior used in pursuit of their own economic ends; • Davis-Bacon prevailing wage legislation is and was little more than a union wage protection racket; • Union practices in job targeting, salting, project labor agreements, environmental permitting, living wage requirements, and corporate campaigns are indistinguishable from ordinary blackmail, extortion, and strong-arm work.

No, I don’t think unions are good for America. Unions, and particularly unions in the public sector, may well be our literal undoing.

...Public rent seeking has none of the limitations that eventually brought down economic rent seekers in the private workforce. Public rent seeking is much, much worse....

the only ways I know of to break unions is a)de-certification of the union by its members; and b)Presidential action. (ala Reagan and the ATCs) Are there any other ways? Why can't the public at large put the nix on 'public service' unions?

Unions in the public sector in particular must be banned entirely, and Hatch-Act like prohibitions enacted and enforced against public employees engaging in political activities. They should have the same rights every other citizen enjoys to vote, and petition their government for benefits and the redress of grievances. As it it, they have become "super-citizens". We average citizens can only vote and lobby government. Public employees form unions which then are empowered by law to make demands on the government and compel bargaining in good faith on those demands, can often take their unsatisfied demands to binding arbitration, and can organize to select their own managers and elected officials (look at California, where unions regularly brag about owning government). If that is not a blatant case of unequal protection before the law, I have never seen one. It's the poor serfs laboring to pay constantly increasing taxes and fees on the one hand, and our unionized rulers growing fat on our labors on the other. Break out the pitchforks!

Greenhut, in the inside cover his recent book u>Plunder, quotes Voltaire to great effect: The art of government is to make two-thirds of the nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.

Public employee unions have become one of the primary instruments of this criminal enterprise, and must be utterly disbanded. Public employees should have exactly the same rights as any other citizen: no more, no less.

Excellent column.

Even the radical FDR opposed public employee unions.

Public employee unions are driving local, state governments to fiscal ruin. The house of cards they built is coming down. I won’t cry when it happens.

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