“In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988. This order permitted federal workers to engage in collective bargaining and opened the door for states and cities to do the same. In my opinion, it is the biggest single act that has led America to our current financial nightmare. Why? I agree with the Roosevelts.
President Teddy Roosevelt vehemently opposed such a decision and extended policies prohibiting federal union workers from even talking to Congress. In 1902, he issued Executive Order 163 prohibiting union workers from,”individually or through associations, [soliciting] an increase of pay, or to influence or to attempt to influence in their own interest any legislation whatever, either before Congress or its Committees, or in any way save through the heads of the Departments in or under which they serve, on penalty of dismissal from the government service.” He twice issued Executive Orders expanding the restrictions on collective bargaining for federal workers.
Even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said allowing government employees to organize and strike against the taxpayers was “unthinkable and intolerable.” In 1955, George Meany (what a great name for a union leader), President of the AFL-CIO said, “It is impossible to collectively bargain with the government.” When you permit weak, self-interested, voter-loving politicians and self-interested, dues-loving labor leaders in the same room with taxpayers’ money, only bad things will happen.”
You are correct that extending collective barganing to public employees is bogus, but the fact still remains that the US was still stuck in the ravages of the “Great Depression” when JFK took office, and was headed to economic shutdown, until his tax cut allowed industrial expansion to begin. Prior to that we were living in the remains of a war economy that was falling on its face.