Your tax dollars
I posted on this on February, under “Are Government Unions Necessary?” That, admittedly, was a bit of a rant – even though mostly correct. Today, though, we have a piece we are linking to written by Chris Edwards, Director of Tax Policy Studies, Cato Institute. (It’s a Libertarian think tank, if that sort of thing bothers you.) It looks like a nice piece of research that, without the Tables, is two standard pages long. It also has 17 footnotes so you can pursue the matter further if so inclined.
As for myself, quite aside from the outrageous level of guaranteed benefits and low qualifying thresholds, I hold to the notion there is no philosophical justification for having our fellow citizens – employed by us – joining unions in order to protect themselves (from…what, exactly?) Things really get out of hand when the two parties are negotiating lavish early retirement benefits and are really in bed together. Also, Americans consider unions to be sacrosanct – bad idea the unions count on. Workers are all free to join professional associations, instead. Here’s a short excerpt. Please go to the Cato Site and read the rest.
Prior to the 1960s, unions represented less than 15 percent of the state and local workforce. At the time, courts generally held that public-sector workers did not have the same union privileges that private workers had under the 1935 Wagner Act, such as collective bargaining.
That changed during the 1960s and 1970s, as a flood of pro-union laws in dozens of states triggered a dramatic rise in public-sector unionism. Many states passed laws that encouraged or required collective bargaining in the public sector, and states also passed laws to impose compulsory union dues and fees on government workers. Princeton University’s Henry Farber has documented the rise in public-sector unionism since the 1950s. He found that the number of states allowing collective bargaining for public-sector workers jumped from just one in 1955 to 10 by 1965. New York City granted collective bargaining privileges to most city workers in 1958.
