Citizens for Sensible Change

Taking America Back from the Public Employee Unions

Watching the pickets outside Stratford Town Hall, and the behavior of public employee unions generally, reminds one of Frank Capra’s classic film It’s A Wonderful Life. Remember the scene when George Bailey and his new bride Mary are leaving on their honeymoon, but are suddenly called back to head off a run on the Bailey Savings & Loan. Informed by Cousin Billy that the bank is out of cash, Mary pulls out their honeymoon wad and offers it up to the panicked shareholders. Hoping to make the available cash satisfy the anxious throng, George’s urges them to accept enough money to tide them over. But Tom, who is the first one up to the window, demands every dime he has on deposit. Tom has no concept that the situation requires shared sacrifice to get through the crisis. He acts only upon his selfish interests and without regard for his fellow depositors.

In the present instance, Stratford town employees are being asked to agree to a wage freeze to address the town’s budget shortfall, or, alternatively, face layoffs. But they will have none of it. They have multi-year contracts and want what they think is rightfully theirs. But what about the taxpayers who pay those salaries and benefits that most private sector workers would be thrilled to receive? What leverage do they have when they lose their jobs, and health coverage? What claims can they make upon their former employers, other than time-limited unemployment compensation? Who represents the business owners whose sales fall in a sluggish economy? Can they demand that customers continue to buy from them? Of course not! Such situations require shared sacrifice, a concept that is apparently as alien to public employee unions as it was to Tom. Instead, these union members, many of whom aren’t even Stratford residents, engage in a campaign of personal vilification and high pressure tactics directed at the mayor in the hopes that he can be intimidated into abandoning his civic duty to represent the interests of the general citizenry.

Ironically, President Franklin Roosevelt, under whose administration private sector unions gained the rights they enjoy today, was personally opposed to the idea of public employee unionization, as were union leaders generally--and for good reason. In the case of private sector unions, collective bargaining provides a mechanism whereby workers can earn their fair share of company profits. But when government is the employer, there are no profits, just taxpayers who must be tapped to pay salaries and benefits. The money to pay public employees comes out of the pockets of all workers. At least until the 1950s, union leaders recognized that government employees generally have a monopoly on the services they provide and should not use that monopoly to extort from the American taxpaying public. They, like President Roosevelt, understood that public employees would have a vested interest in raising taxes and growing the size of government for their own selfish ends. And they also recognized that they would hitch their wagons to the star of any politician, or party, willing to accede to their demands. As private sector unionization faltered, however, union leaders did a complete about-face, looking upon public sector unionization as the means of preserving their power and high salaries.

I say this with no particular animus toward union members. I grew up in a private sector union (steelworker) family and spent my entire professional life as a state government employee. However, I never lost sight of the fact that my combination of taxpayer-financed salary, health, and pension benefits was generous by private sector standards, and I always thought it unconscionable and unseemly for public sector unions to become enmeshed in politics for the purpose of jiggering the system to their further benefit. While most public employees perform honorably and conscientiously, the public sector unions that represent them have become a cancer on the body politic. The Democratic Party has become totally captive to the public employee unions which filled its campaign coffers with nearly a billion dollars in the recent election cycle, almost all of it gained from forced dues extractions paid, ultimately, by the taxpayers. So, not only do taxpayers pay the salaries of public employees, they pay, again, to support the candidates favored by the same public employee unions who will grant them even more favors.

The ill-fated millionaires’ tax was just the latest gimmick championed by public sector unions and their far-left allies as a means of funding higher salaries for their members. Unions also want to abandon a sacred tenet of labor union democracy—the secret ballot--in favor of a ”card check” system being peddled under the totally dishonest rubric of the “Employee Free Choice Act.” And, naturally, they vehemently oppose any state laws or referenda which might compromise their ability to gain by default that portion of union dues used for political advocacy. Fortunately, every union member has the right, under the Supreme Court’s Beck decision (1988) to get back that portion of his or her dues not used for collective bargaining (in Back’s case it was 79%). It’s time for Connecticut voters, and fair-minded public employees, to take their government, and unions, back from these special interests.

This editorial is an edited version of that which appeared in the Connecticut Post in June 2009.