Public Employee Unions and Government

Member Group : Guest Articles

The day may have finally arrived when the confrontation between public unions and government is being resolved. Ever increasing public salaries, benefits, guaranteed pensions and employment, with little regard to the economic climate, are no longer sustainable. People are losing their homes and going into debt, while being taxed to pay for those lavish "Cadillac" public sector employee benefits that are insulated from the market forces confronting the private sector. The clout advanced through union dues money poured into legislators’ war chests countrywide has met its apex. The unhealthy relationship between elected officials and public employee unions has the unions boasting of electing their own boss. According to OpenSecrets.org, as of this February, AFSME is the third largest donor to national politics and contributes almost exclusively to liberal Democrats

Has Wisconsin become the tipping point? As long as we’ve had an expanded growth in the economy, governments found ways to satisfy an apparent insatiable appetite for increased benefits from the public largess. It has now become a three way battle between the taxpayers, the government and public employees’ unions. Taxpayers can no longer afford to pay for these extravagant union contracts, which have ballooned far out of proportion to the private sector compensation for similar work. In the private sector, even union agreements have to be grounded in some sort of reality, because there is no bottomless pit of taxpayer money to rely on.

Private sector union agreements are weighed against the bottom line that is driven by the market forces and profitability; less neither will have a job.

Be it envy or unaffordable, the chasm between those feeding from the public trough and those providing the food is evident. As far back as President Roosevelt, who didn’t see public service unions as a good idea, or George Meany, the first president of the AFL-CIO, who held that it was ‘impossible to bargain collectively with the government"; however, in 1962 President Kennedy’s executive order lifted the ban on government unions (rather undemocratically I might add). Public sector unions have been a fifty year old mistake.

For the past 8 years, Pennsylvania budgets have increased at twice the rate of the CPI. Included in that budget were the ever growing agreements with public employee unions. Including Pennsylvania, forty five states face budget shortfalls. Based on all media comments, Governor Corbett is dancing round the public employee union issue, but it will have to be faced by June 30th when the current contract expires. Pennsylvania’s defined benefit pension system is no longer acceptable to the taxpayers. The spiraling cost of public pensions and health care is off the scale in almost every state and must be resolved.

It is time to ask the question, are public employee unions a monopoly? Is there a violation of antitrust laws? In private industry, the employer will only put on bargaining table that which he can withstand. The employer in the public sector is the elected representatives of the people, who are viewed as an endless source of tax dollars. Where budget shortfalls must be met, the option is raising taxes or floating a bond to meet obligations. A strike, being the worst option (teacher unions) affects the innocent third party, the children and the taxpayer, and thus, are held hostage to the power of the unions. In the private sector only the union and the employer are affected. With no money left in tax payer’s pocket to be tapped and municipal bonds, being a bad investment, if sellable at all, the only option is to start over. As in the private sector, learn to do with less.

While unionized public employees are taxpayers, they depend on taxes to retain employment; conversely, when taxes are raised in the private sector, where there is a direct correlation between production/output and income, his ability to stay in business is jeopardized.

The irony of all that’s been said is while we must get our arms around the public union power and compensation that, in itself, is not the root cause of the financial malaise in which we find our nation, nor need it necessarily be the whipping boy. When we look at the cause and effect of the deals that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd arranged with Fanny and Freddy mortgages as a quid pro quo for campaign donations, which ultimately led to the collapse of the housing market, we might start with Frank, who violated the public trust and belongs in prison and then work our way down the list of players until they all pay the price of leading the financial destruction of America.

When we look at the AIG and Lehman Brothers’ sleight of hand on wall street; when we look at the present administration running up a debt of 14 trillion dollars with money created out of thin air; when we look at a small group of environmental zealots dictating energy policies which forbid Nuclear plants or drilling in Anwar, Prudhoe Bay, the Bakken Formation, Austin Chalk or shallow off-shore water as our economy is being strangled by oil suppliers bent on killing us, it may be time to think out of the box. Instead, we subsidize the non cost competitive bio fuels, resulting in corn, which is used to produce the fuel, nearly doubling in price in the past year. A rather untimely experiment while we have a record 45 million people on food stamps who will feel this crunch.

Irrespective of those unwise and perhaps even corrupt political charades, the union and legislature sweetheart arrangement that has been masked for years, needs fixing. It would seem a sleeping giant has awoken to the resulting economic consequences and it appears he is not going away. It’s an axiom that to be forewarned is to be prepared and with the 4 billion dollar shortfall in the current Pennsylvania budget, don’t be surprised if Wisconsin comes to your state sooner rather than later.