History of Public Sector Unions Shows Why They Should Be Banned

Washington Examiner ^ | February 27, 2010 | Mark Tapscott

[gusopol3]

Doug Ross has a useful and concise history of public sector unions that demonstrates with undeniable clarity why public sector unions should never have been allowed to organize in the first place.

Unions can make sense in the private sector where the purpose of an enterprise is to provide products and services needed by people who can pay for them and in the process allow the firm to generate a profit to be shared in mutually agreeable proportions among owner and employees. The profit is the essential measure of whether the enterprise is viable.

But in the public sector, there is no such measure because the state can only tax wealth created by others. So in order for public sector employees to gain a bigger share of tax revenues, either the taxes must be increased or spending on some other public activity - police protection, public schools, regulation of prescription drug safety - must be decreased.

[gusopol3]

Link to the Ross blog ( very informative)

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/02/illustrated-history-of-public-sector.html

[gusopol3]

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/02/illustrated-history-of-public-sector.html

[ought-six]

I always thought public unions were a terrible idea, because they create a master-slave relationship, with the tax-paying citizen being the enslaved party.

[hal ogen]

The louts in the public “service” unions here go to county council meetings with signs and yell at budget time, intimidating the council weasels. the weasels then give them what they want and more. that has been going on for decades.

[Humble Servant]

In the private sector, as well as the public sector, concessions have been extracted that simply cannot be met, i.e. pension and medical benefits for retirees. A labor union is a monopolization of a commodity—labor. If I told you that your company could only purchase aluminum, or plastic, or fabric from one vendor, you would call me crazy. While I understand the historical origins of labor unions originating in coal mines and companies that essentially owned entire towns and the people therein, they have placed this country in an unsustainable position.