WTMJ radio has a letter that was apparently sent last week to Wisconsin business owners who supported Scott Walker for governor. [...]
At one time in this country, there were few workplace safety laws, few restraints on employers, and incredibly exploitive working conditions that ranged from slavery, to share cropping, to putting children in dangerous working conditions. Unions, to their everlasting credit, helped play an important role in leveling the playing field for workers.
However, as the laws changed, there was less and less need for unions. Because of that, union membership shrank. In response, the unions became more explicitly involved in politics. Over time, they managed to co-opt the Democratic Party, pull their strings, and rewrite our labor laws in their favor.
As Lord Acton noted, "Power tends to corrupt," and that has certainly been true for the unions. Unions have become selfish, extremely greedy, and even thuggish in their never-ending quest to take in as much as they can for themselves, at the expense of everyone else who crosses their path.
That's why today, unions have changed from organizations that "look out for the little guy" into the largest, most rapacious special interest group in the entire country. Where unions go, disaster usually follows. Just to name a few examples: [...]
This thirty second video will show you everything that is wrong with public sector unions. [...]
[...] The video above shows a representative of the United Healthcare Workers from a budget hearing in California in 2009. She makes it clear that the union got ‘democrats’ elected and that they [the union] ‘have long memories’ should the members deign to not support the union demands. If the officials support needed measures to cut spending, the representative will unleash her members to campaign against their reelection. And her threats are all legally sanctioned. And they are paid for by us.
This is the central problem with public sector unions. They get to use taxpayer money to elect their bosses and they get to use taxpayer money to convince their bosses to give them more taxpayer money.
Let’s recap where we are:
* We’ve allowed labor unions to become monopoly personnel providers for many state and local governments
* We force employees to make weekly payments to union leaders
* The union leaders use these payments to hire lobbyists to agitate for more government spending
* The union leaders use these payments to spend millions on campaigns to elect politicians
* The union leaders then negotiate with these politicians to set pay, benefits and work rules for their members
* The politicians know that if they cross the union leaders, their reelection plans are more complicated
* We fund the whole thing
If we can’t break this corrupt cycle, no other policy decisions we make will matter. Yes, it is that important.
Too bad the showdown with public employee unions has come to this, however long in the making. One can be pro-union and still feel a growing resentment at these workers' ability to set their own dream retirement benefits as the private sector's were being amputated. Not that they are to blame. They got what they could -- it's the American way -- though they overplayed their hand by resisting honest efforts to reform government, schools above all.
The public workers respond that rather than race to the bottom, others should rise to their level. But the difference between them and others is that they got to fire their employers at the ballot box. Their payoff came in the form of future goodies that wouldn't hit the taxpayers until the politicians were long gone. Hence, retirements at age 50 and gold-plated health coverage for life.
"Do you know how much of our retirement plan we are funding ourselves?" an aggrieved teachers union official asked. To which I replied, "No, I don't know, but I happen to be funding 100 percent of mine."
Public employees are fighting to keep their old-fashioned defined-benefit plans, which have all but disappeared in the private sector. Such plans promise to pay a set amount to each qualified retiree. If the investments can't keep up with the promises, the employer must make up the difference -- in the case of government workers, the taxpayer. [...]
[...] I agree with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who said "the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."
The Battle of Wisconsin has focused public attention on a fiscal reality. Whatever the necessity and value of public-sector jobs, federal, state and local governments simply can't sustain their current costs. Irrational unionists and media liberals have preposterously compared duly-elected Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators in Wisconsin to anti-democratic dictators. In fact, it's just the opposite. This is democracy at work. Wisconsin voters in 2010 ousted Democrats and gave majority control of their legislature and the governor's office to the GOP. Walker campaigned on exactly the measures he's now taking in regard to balancing the budget, reining in excessive compensation for public employees and restricting their collective bargaining privileges, as is done in 24 other states.
In response, 10,000 angry unionists have laid siege to the state capitol, shaking their fists, shouting epithets and waving signs. So what? That was to be expected. They're defending their rice bowl and their self interest. Meanwhile, millions of non-union Wisconsinites who work in the private sector and whose taxes support the angry unionists haven't descended upon the capitol. Those who voted for Walker and other Republicans are getting what they were promised. In our system of government, free elections trump demonstrations. [...]
Yesterday I told you about the unionized New York City bus drivers who took an average of two months paid leave in order to recover from being "assaulted" by spit. Turns out that someone in New York is actually trying to do something about these abuses. That person would be MTA Chairman Jay Walder, and boy does he have the unions spitting nails. They are actually MAD that they are being called out for not doing their job.
The bus driver assault story is pretty outrageous. But unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Here are some other examples from the New York Post of some of the outrageous union practices in New York City.
- Overtime kicks in by eight-hour day rather than 40-hour week. So employees earn full pay while working less by calling out sick and then making up the lost wages through (premium) overtime.
- Many bus drivers clock a 12-hour shift for driving four hours in the morning rush and four in the evening rush. For the four hours in between, they're paid for being available -- but with no work to do.
- Whenever crew members of the Long Island Rail Road are switched from one train to another, they get another day's full pay.
- Real-time bus arrival information is finally being tested on Manhattan's 34th Street -- more than a decade after technology had made it possible. Union drivers didn't want to be tracked, so union bus mechanics refused to service wheels with the rotation-counting device needed to supplement GPS in its early days.
- While the new system on the Canarsie line can run trains with no crew aboard, L trains still operate with crews of two -- thanks to union work rules.
- The union representing crane operators insists on having full-time "oilers" at construction sites every day. But unlike the steam-driven equipment of old, modern cranes don't need constant lubrication.
- On building sites across the city, union operators must staff elevators -- even when they have normal push-buttons for each floor.
- Told it would cost $1,000 to have a union electrician plug a laptop into the wall of a Midtown hotel, one smart customer ran out and bought a spare battery for $70 instead -- and then noted it would be cheaper to buy a whole new computer than to pay the hotel electrician.
- A Midtown hotel just lost out on hosting the Sidney Hillman Foundation awards dinner after its unionized workers said they'd refuse to serve the foundation president -- because he also heads up a rival union.
Sort of makes you wonder how much money we could save on government if government employee unions were made illegal.
