Venitist James Sherk points out the union movement has reached a historic milestone — more union members currently work for the government than for private businesses. As a result, the union movement's priorities have shifted. Because taxes fund government pay and benefits, unions are now pushing for tax increases across the country. The union movement that once campaigned to raise private-sector workers' wages has transformed into a government union movement that campaigns to raise their taxes.
How did this happen? Union organizing surged after the passage of the National Labor Relations Act(NLRA) in 1935. But because union contracts raise costs, unionized businesses generally grow more slowly than non-union firms. Market competition has caused union membership to gradually fall in the private sector since the 1950s. The new government unions created in the 1960s could safely demand inflated pay without putting their jobs at risk. Now most union members work for the government.
Sherk notes the early trade unionists did not believe that unions had a place in government. They believed the purpose of unions was to redistribute profits from business owners to workers — and the government makes no profits. The government labor movement has become a powerful special interest lobby to raise taxes on working Americans to raise the level of compensation for government workers. Taxpayers should not have to subsidize this lobbying. Congress should prohibit federal unions from using the federal payroll system to automatically deduct union dues from government employees' paychecks.
Basil Venitis muses the overstaffing and sloppy work performance in the public sector is the subject of countless jokes, which would not be funny if they did not contain a strong element of truth. Even civil servants joke about the 80-20 rule, where 20 percent of the employees do 80 percent of the work and vice versa. The late-night comedians can always get a laugh when describing the indifferent attitude of department of motor vehicle employees. Professors in many public colleges now only teach one class per semester. Professors in private colleges teach three or four courses, which is not particularly taxing. No wonder college tuitions have been rising far faster than inflation. The private-sector has been surging in productivity growth while much of the public sector has negative productivity growth.
Understandably, government employee unions like these arrangements. But the money that makes it all possible comes from your taxes, and that explains why the union movement has become an aggressive lobby for higher taxes. Instead of voters telling the government how to spend their money, government unions now tell voters the taxes they want them to pay. They always have a one-word answer: more. As taxpayers have discovered, the new labor movement wants you to pay your pseudofair share to them.
Venitis asserts that public sector unions are bankrupting countries. There is a rising concern about the growing political power of public sector unions. With large budget deficits and huge funding gaps in pension plans, policymakers in many countries are trying to constrain spending and improve government efficiency. But unions stand in the way of needed fiscal reforms.
California's public sector workers have the highest average compensation of public sector workers in any State, and they also have one of the highest rates of unionization. It's not a coincidence that California is having severe budget problems and that it finds spending restraint very difficult to achieve.
Public sector workers can often retire at age 50 or 55 and draw very large pensions. In California, for example, there are more than 9,000 retired public sector workers with annual pensions of more than $100,000 a year. Oftentimes, these high pensions result from government workers abusing the system; for example, the last year of an employee's salary may be artificially inflated to garner a larger annual pension, a technique known as pension spiking.
Journalists often do not ask tough questions of groups such as firefighters and police because of the valuable contributions of those groups to local governments. Yes, fire and police jobs can be dangerous, but numerous private sector jobs are even more dangerous, and they don't get the sweetheart deals on pensions and other benefits that public sector workers do.
The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association are powerful players in every aspect of education policy, and they rake in about $2 billion of union dues and fees a year. These unions shamelessly oppose reforms such as school choice, they protect failing teachers from termination, and they impose layers of costly bureaucracy on local governments. Unions also create barriers to entry into the teaching profession by opposing alternative teacher certification programs that would allow more mid-career professionals and those without traditional teaching degrees into the classroom. Many of the problems plaguing education today can be attributed directly to union power, which can be curtailed through common-sense reforms. Breaking the stranglehold from these unions is the first step toward making long-term meaningful education reform.
The level of public sector unionization varies dramatically from state to state. While New York's public sector workforce is 73 percent unionized, North Carolina's is only 8 percent. These large differences are due to varying state-level rules on collective bargaining and union shop provisions.
The public's servants have become the public's masters. It does seem that government workers have tightened the screws on citizens and governments in many countries. As the baby boomers in government workforces retire and draw their generous pension and retiree health benefits, there will be pressure to raise property, income, and VAT.
Venitis asserts that public sector unions should be outlawed. Governments should pass legislation to ban collective bargaining in the public sector, which is the successful path followed by Virginia and North Carolina. Government workers should be able to join voluntary organizations and have a voice in public policy debates, as people in any other voluntary organization can do. But collective bargaining infringes the rights of workers to freedom of association, and it creates monopoly unions with a privileged position in our democratic process. A huge fiscal battle between taxpayers and public sector unions is getting under way in many States.
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