Some thoughts penned by FR correspondent Bradley Benbrook…
Why do state and local governments have public employee unions? Normal unions in the private sector organize for the purpose of negotiating with management over pay and benefits. There are two very distinct sides to the negotiating table.
Not so with public employee unions. Public employee unions use millions of dollars in member dues to elect (and then strong-arm) the very same politicians who will sit across from them at the negotiating table. In other words, there is no labor-versus-management dynamic when it comes to public employee unions. In the public sector, labor has become management, and labor has predictably rewarded itself with generous pay and benefits.
Of course, this only works because public employee unions and their political protectors are playing with taxpayer money – your money – rather than shareholders’ money, and they assume that taxpayers won’t pay close enough attention to learn about it, much less do anything about it.
For an important discussion of how this dangerous trend originated and has grown to the point where states and municipalities are facing insolvency, see The New Tammany Hall in The Weekly Standard. (Kudos to Joel Fox at Fox and Hounds for linking to this piece.)
In particular, professors Siegel and DiSalvo highlight the parity between public and private sector wages and the growing disparity between public and private sector benefits:
In other words, it would be a little too obvious for public sector workers to suddenly get paid a lot more than their private sector neighbors (“How can Bob and Shirley afford a second house? I thought they both worked for the state?”), so the trick now is to load up more quietly with generous health benefits and rich pensions that will be paid after the public employee retires and moves to Nevada or Texas to start a second career. But it is still a money grab all the same, made possible by politicians, at the expense of taxpayers.
Indeed, Professors Siegel and DiSalvo identify the threat to representative democracy that is posed by the ascendance of public employee unions into what they call a “labor aristocracy”:
It may be the case that California’s mere citizens won’t regain control over their state and local governments until the public employee pension obligations literally push one government after another into insolvency. Reform will ultimately happen, since the money will someday run out. The question is whether, before that embarrassment, Republican politicians will be noisily sounding the alarm (and hopefully achieving reform) or merely trying not to offend the public employee unions. On this score, see Jon Fleischman’s call to arms on public employee pensions.
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