[DuncanWaring]

If private-sector workers need unions to protect themselves from eeeeeevil corporations, why do government employees need unions?

To protect themselves from eeeeeeevil taxpayers?

[doc1019]

Paid into a police union for over 28 years and received absolutely no benefits for my efforts. Money gone.

[dragnet2]

In California over the last few decades, the correctional officers union first lobbied for a prison-building spree

That they did. Big money in corrections. And the bribe taking spree in Sacramento was underway as the contractors lined up. Then they had to find enough occupants to justify these prison camps.

There are now more unionized government employees than exist in private sector America.

This thread will likely never make it to 40.

[Only1choice____Freedom]

Government unions were allowed by an executive order.

They can be rescinded by another executive order from another president.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_10988

It needs to happen.

[DUMBGRUNT]

What we know so far about the officer who first pursued Gray (his history of mental health issues, in particular) suggests that he might have benefited from being eased into a different line of work.

What do we know of the history of mental health issues for reporters?

Are reporters required to take a 'warp' test; I would believe that this copper had to take at least one such test.

How is it public knowledge about some alleged personal issues?

Brian Williams makes ten million a year and has major issues with reality; therefore reporters are full of BS.

[Respond Code Three]

Just a friendly suggestion to Mr. Douthat. Spend 5 years as a patrolman in any medium or large Police Department and you will understand why Police Officers need unions.

[deadrock]

It isn’t a political or philosophical problem/debate, it is mathematics. But the Left is stuck on remedial math.

[Steve0113]

bookmark

[publius911]

...the government's money is not its own, so negotiations between politicians and their employees (who are also often their political supporters) amount to a division of spoils rather than a sharing of profits.

Not exactly a new blazing insight...
As succinctly explained by none other than...

Franklin Delano Roosevelt!

In a little-known letter he wrote to the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees in 1937, Roosevelt reasoned:

"... Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the government. 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 ...
The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for ... officials ... to bind the employer ... The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives ...
"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 ... This obligation is paramount ...
A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent ... to prevent or obstruct ... Government ... Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government ... is unthinkable and intolerable."

Entire Letter