FDR's warning: Public employee unions a no-no

Hernando Today (Tampa, FL) ^ | October 17, 2010 | By JOHN REINIERS

[Oldeconomybuyer]

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the patron saint of the American labor movement, was a man of strong character.

Although he had a lock on labor's vote, he expressed caution about public sector unions. 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."

Public sector unions are a client of a Democratic bureaucracy that wants their vote. The taxpayer - the "employer" - isn't a player in the bargaining process.

Public sector unions now threaten to overwhelm our economy with financially untenable compensation packages. We are broke. Legislators should put an end to these abuses; and while they are at it, craft major structural reforms with a complete downsizing of selected government "services."

A limited government becomes an affordable government.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

[muawiyah]

Interestingly enough back in FDR's day you had "normal" American type labor unions competing for government employee members up against "Communist" European type labor unions.

Roosevelt made a deal ~ if the American unions kept the Commies out he'd give federal employees a pay raise.

So, that's what happened. Organizers engaged in serious street fights and beat the Commies down.

Somewhere around the house here I have a pen Roosevelt used to sign that pay raise.

[MetaThought]

It sounds more likely that FDR was trying to pre-emptively attack a potential source of opposition to his leadership.

[dusttoyou]

The problem, is not one of public service union striking. The PROBLEM is that these same unions are permitted to back political candidates and parties with money, support, demonstration and most importantly to slow down and obstruct when non-Dem administration is in power.

Public service unions were created for no other purpose. This one of the many issues that a fresh conservative congress should add to the “ASAP” agenda, Public service = no union.

[pepperdog]

People paid with tax money shouldn’t have the right to unions or to strike, all they should have the right to do is quit!

[kearnyirish2]

“People paid with tax money shouldn’t have the right to unions or to strike, all they should have the right to do is quit!”

People paid with tax money shouldn’t have the right to vote; if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you will always have the support of Paul. Here in the northeast there are so many people paid at some level of government (municipal, county, state, federal) that it ensures the Dems will have a lock on the region permanently. It also ensures that the last employed non-government-worker Americans will have left by 2013, and a welfare/illegal alien underground economy does not tax revenue raise...