http://www.jeffjacoby.com/8852/union-rights-that-arent
Union 'rights' that aren't
by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
March 2, 2011
IF WISCONSIN GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER were getting a dollar for every protester,
politician, and pundit accusing him of union-busting, attacking public-sector
employees, or waging a war on working people -- to say nothing of those
likening him to Hosni Mubarak and Adolf Hitler -- it wouldn't be long before he
could personally close his state's $137 million budget shortfall.
To angry protesters occupying the Capitol building in Madison, it may seem
clear that Walker's bill restricting the scope of collective bargaining for
government employees is "an assault on unions," as President Obama called it,
and no doubt many of them would agree with the AFL-CIO that "nothing less than
democracy, fundamental rights, and freedom are at stake" in the fight over
public-sector bargaining.
But they aren't at stake. There is no "fundamental right" to collective
bargaining in government jobs. Indeed, labor leaders themselves used to say so.
Arnold Zander, the Wisconsin union organizer who became the first president of
the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, wrote in 1940
that AFSCME saw "less value in the use of contracts and agreements in public
service than . . . in private employment." Instead of collective bargaining, he
explained, "our local unions find promotion and adoption of civil service
legislation . . . the more effective way" to serve the interests of government
employees. As late as the 1950s, AFSCME considered collective bargaining in the
public sector desirable but not essential, and viewed strong civil service laws
as the best protection for government workers.
In December 1955, in a New York Times Magazine essay on "Labor's Future," no
less a union icon than AFL-CIO president George Meany wrote: "The main function
of American trade unions is collective bargaining. It is impossible to bargain
collectively with the government."
Obviously, Big Labor's outlook later changed. Dozens of states -- starting with
Wisconsin in 1959 -- passed laws that authorized collective bargaining in the
public sector, and public-sector unionism skyrocketed in the decades that
followed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January that while union
membership has dwindled to just 6.9 percent of the private-sector workforce,
among public employees it has grown to more than 36 percent. Today most union
members work for government. With public-employee dues swelling union coffers
by hundreds of millions of dollars annually, it's no surprise that
organized-labor and its allies now embrace collective-bargaining in the public
sector as a "fundamental right" that only a union-busting tyrant would threaten.
Yet even today, public-employee collective bargaining is far from universal.
According to a General Accounting Office summary, in only about half the states
are unions allowed to negotiate labor contracts for most public workers. The
other states either limit bargaining rights to specific government employees,
such as teachers or firefighters, or ban public-sector collective bargaining
outright. Among the states that don't allow public employees to bargain
collectively are North Carolina, Texas, and Indiana; at last report,
"democracy, fundamental rights, and freedom" were doing just fine in all of
them. They'll do just fine in Wisconsin, too, if the governor's proposed
reforms are passed.
In 1955, no less a Big Labor icon than George Meany was still convinced that
"it is impossible to bargain collectively with the government."
And then there are federal employees. Obama scolds Walker for trying to
restrict collective bargaining by government employees to wages, yet the two
million federal civilian (non-postal) workers Obama presides over can't even
bargain over that much: With rare exceptions, the wages, hours, and benefits of
federal employment have never been subject to union contracts. The president
appears to be quite OK with that. Last November he unilaterally announced a
two-year pay freeze for all federal civilian federal employees, informing them
-- no negotiating -- that they were going to "make some sacrifices" adding up
to $2 billion this fiscal year.
Does this mean that federal employees are oppressed and underpaid? Hardly.
Average federal wages far outstrip those in the private economy. When benefits
are included, federal worker compensation averages $123,000 -- more than double
the private-sector average of $61,000. Federal employees don't need collective
bargaining over pay and pensions to be treated well, and the lack of bargaining
rights has not busted federal-employee unions.
As even labor leaders once acknowledged, it is civil-service rules, not
collective bargaining rights, that safeguard public employees' interests in
hiring, promotions, and discipline. Wisconsin could abolish public-sector
collective-bargaining entirely, and its government workers would still be
strongly protected from management abuse -- and as free as they are today to
join unions able to advocate on their behalf.
Wisconsin Republicans are targeting only the public unions' overwhelming
political clout. They pose no danger to the welfare of public employees -- let
alone to "democracy, fundamental rights, and freedom."
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).
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"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of
opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of
increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all
its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” - Harry S.
Truman
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations,
or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and
evidence." - John Adams
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few points and repeat them over and over.”
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
— Paul Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933
to 1945
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evil men." - Plato
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Thomas Jefferson
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