Great Idea – Ban Government Employee Unions
ByToday’s Washington Examiner editorial offers an excellent suggestion: ban government employee unions.
There was a time in America when the typical union member was a blue-collar guy sweating in a Pittsburgh steel mill, screwing together Chevies in Detroit or loading and unloading ships on the San Francisco docks. But things are radically different today because Joe Lunchpail has been replaced by white-collar Todd and Margo Yuppiecrat processing Social Security checks in Baltimore, conducting environmental audits in Denver or keeping the lines moving at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The breakdown of union membership make this change clear: Only 7.3 percent of all private sector employees are union members, while 37.6 percent of all government workers are unionized. Fifty-one percent of all union members are government workers.
They point out that when government employees go on strike, they aren’t striking against some greedy corporation or rich boss, they’re striking against you the taxpayer. What they want is for you to pay higher taxes to support their lifestyles and benefits.
“Their pay is funded through your tax dollars,” he adds. “For government employee union members to get more, your taxes need to go up. So that is what unions now lobby for.” And as with so much else in this country, Sherk cautions that what is happening on the West Coast is likely a portent of disturbing things to come for the rest of us:
* In Oregon, public employee unions are funding ballot initiatives to raise personal income and business taxes in order to protect gold-plated medical benefits from state spending reductions.
* In California, the Service Employees International Union spent at least $1 million on a massive television ad campaign demanding that desperate state government officials raise oil, gas and liquor taxes instead of cutting spending.
These actions point to the hard reality that the interests of government employee unions are fundamentally opposed to the interests of taxpayers. The unions are serving their own members, while the government officials who oversee them are serving the public, which usually means delivering the most efficient service at the lowest possible cost. …
Just yesterday my local newspaper ran a New York Times piece about the budget wars going on in New York State. In short, New York State is broke and may not be able to meet all its financial obligations next month. You would think that would be a wake up call for NY lawmakers to act, and act swiftly, to cut the budget. But they won’t because of labor unions.
Mr. [Carl] Kruger, a Brooklyn Democrat who is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has amassed a campaign war chest of $2.1 million, in part because of generous contributions from his labor union allies.
Despite a deficit of more than $3 billion, Mr. Kruger has threatened to block any significant cuts to health care and education, the biggest spending areas in the budget. He has presented his own budget plan, which has startled even Albany veterans for its reliance on one-time maneuvers and financial gimmickry.
The governor and lawmakers have clashed over spending before. But recent events have created a new urgency and, in the view of Mr. Paterson and budget analysts, a desperate situation.
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And spending just keeps soaring. New York now spends more than any other state on Medicaid, twice the national average per capita. It also spends the most on school aid, per student, than any other state.
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Senators have delayed budget negotiations for weeks as Mr. Kruger accused the governor of creating a “doomsday scenario” and vowed not to “succumb to his hysteria.”
The battle over how to close the deficit this year is merely setting the stage for a far more bitter fight likely to erupt next year, pitting the governor against a fractious and rebellious State Senate, where Democrats hold a shaky 32-to-30 majority.
How the budget fight is resolved will have implications for years to come. The comptroller’s office is projecting that the budget gap next year will be nearly $8 billion, and a failure to take long-term steps would exacerbate deficits in 2011 and 2012, as the federal stimulus expires and a temporary increase of taxes on the wealthy ends.
The labor unions and special interests that control the capital are mobilizing for a fight. And lawmakers are likely to balk at making painful cuts in a year when elections will be held for all 212 legislative seats.
Why do you think New York spends more on education and Medicaid than any other state? Do you think New Yorkers receive a better education or better health care than other states? Hardly! We just have better paid government employees. They refuse to take pay cuts, or even forego pay increases, while their private sector counterparts are doing just that, all the while paying higher taxes.
The Industrial Revolution is over. Individuals are capable of negotiating salary and benefits without bankrupting their employers, in this case the taxpayers. It’s time to wake up to what these unions are doing to the taxpayers and put an end to it.
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