Private Sector Unions to the Rescue!

Image by friedmanlynn via Flickr

For those of you who don't know I am a member of a private sector union because I have to be in order to work for the railroad I am currently employed with. A day or so ago I spoke with a friend of mine in regards to an email he had received from one of our union representatives.

The email was entitled, "Don't Let Our Enemies Turn Back the Clock." The emails concern was the actions taking place in Wisconsin and other states. In these respective state legislatures along with republican governors are taking actions to break a never ending cycle of public sector unions donating vast sums of money to get democrats elected, in turn the democrats reward these public sector unions with unsustainable commitments in the form of union contracts.

Here at the Patriot Perspective we have explained through several articles the difference between public and private sector unions and how public sector unions in "union states" have the unique ability to affect the tax rates at both the state and local level. Couple that with states like Wisconsin and Michigan whose debt is out of control and one can see why those governments are doing everything they can to reduce their spending and deficits. Does the law itself end collective bargaining for most public sector employees? Yes. Does it force state workers to take an 8% cut in benefits? Yes. Is that really going to destroy someones livelihood? Hardly.

Back to the letter.

"Don't let our enemies turn back the clock. Why are many union (not going to share the name of my union) members participating across America in rallies opposing attacks on collective bargaining rights? Why have we created the Collective Bargaining Defense Fund to assist our union brothers and sisters? Because we know that those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it. We know that if right wing extremist succeed in busting public sector unions, their next target is airline, bus, and railroad labor unions."

I would really like to know here exactly how they know that the government is going to target these private sector unions? My experience so far with a private sector union has been dismal. 120 dollars a month for little to no representation. I have to be a member or I cannot be employed by the railroad. How's that for freedom? Most of the time it seems as if the union and the company aren't really at odds with each other. But oh well.

"The history of working men and women in America -- before we fought for and won the right to join a union, engage in collective bargaining and have grievances resolved by a neutral party -- was a bleak history of low wages, few if any benefits, unsafe working conditions, and arbitrary discipline and discrimination on the job."

Largely at the time they are speaking of all those conditions did exist but not anymore, and personally it is hard to see how these folks rationalize that the clock would indeed be turned back to those same conditions in the 21st century. But as I said early I wish I had the right to NOT join a union, and in my industry collective bargaining usually results what the company wants anyway. However, I had an engineer tell me once that he thought he always got better contracts when Republicans were in office. Talk about irony if you are a hard core democrat union guy.

"Let's take a short trip back to the times before workplace democracy. Before labor laws and worker rights, courts considered any combination of workers seeking wage increases and/or improved working conditions as a criminal conspiracy, punishable by fine and imprisonment. Picketing an employer -- by even one picket -- was considered by courts an unlawful restraint of trade. Workers typically put in a 12 hour day, six days a week, with no overtime pay, no paid vacations, no employer-provided healthcare insurance, no process for worker grievances to be heard and no compensation for on-the-job injuries."

Workplace democracy usually means workplace socialism, spreading the work around or in my case keeping the board stacked so others can make money too. Usually those combinations of workers seeking those increases did things they weren't supposed to do. Like blackball fellow employees who couldn't afford to strike and crossed the picket line. Or workers would sabotage or deface company property to get their points across. A lot like those spoiled children up in Wisconsin at the state capital recently. Yes the days might have been long and hard back then with little to no compensated time off and guess what it is the exact same way today. I am on call 24/7 with no set off days, pretty much on duty for 12 hours at a time. Sure I have personal time and vacation days that are compensated but due to some of the recent legislation like the rail safety bill of 2008 which the unions backed so they could get more union dues because it would force the railroads to hire more people, that I rarely get time off unless I call in sick. The only problem is the railroads have been exceptionally slow on hiring and training, so we are constantly undermanned with a decent portion of train service employees on federal rest that they have to take at the behest of the Federal Railroad administration thanks to the union I am a member of.

The letter goes on to give more of the same concerning the plight of workers and then begins it close:

"Turn back the clock? Never. We will not go away. We will never forget. Together, in solidarity, we can and will win this fight and emerge stronger then ever."

Living in the past instead of looking to the future. We will be a nuisance and cause trouble like we did in Wisconsin. We like to co-opt 9/11 slogans to look patriotic. If we can get the workers of the United Sates to unite we can live in socialist harmony the rest of our lives. That about sums up the rest of the letter.

Not once do these people recognize the difference between public and private sector unions. The railroad unions deal with a private company and not the federal government unless they are trying to get legislation passed, which they almost always are. The private sector unions do not affect other citizens tax rates in the state or county in which you live. It is a given that the railroad was brutally tough on its employees in the late 19th and early to mid 20th century. A lot of that act has been dealt with. What I want to know is how is the state of Wisconsin brutally tough on its union employees. The trash collectors, the clerks etc? Do they really have it that hard? Are they struggling for raises just to make ends meet? I seriously doubt it.

Folks, continue to do your research, check every bit of information you come across, there are those out there how what you to cast aside reason and feel just for the sake of feeling and abdicating any form of thinking. Don't cast aside reason hold it tight. Check your facts and do not succumb to the call for the abdication of thought.

Andrew Klavan: Behold, your public sector unions at work!

H/T Theo Spark. From Pajamas Media.

Wisconsin Protest: Myth Vs Fact

H/T: Facts are Stubborn Things

Government Union Collective Bargaining 101

Ht: Jawa Report & Gateway Pundit

Union Educations

The Wall Street Journal has this piece today entitled "A Union Education". It's an excellent read, and quite informative about how and why public sector unions are, have been, and always will be a bad idea.

... George Meany, the legendary AFL-CIO president during the Cold War, also opposed the right to bargain collectively with the government.

Why? Because unlike in the private economy, a public union has a natural monopoly over government services. An industrial union will fight for a greater share of corporate profits, but it also knows that a business must make profits or it will move or shut down. The union chief for teachers, transit workers or firemen knows that the city is not going to close the schools, buses or firehouses.

This monopoly power, in turn, gives public unions inordinate sway over elected officials. The money they collect from member dues helps to elect politicians who are then supposed to represent the taxpayers during the next round of collective bargaining. In effect union representatives sit on both sides of the bargaining table, with no one sitting in for taxpayers. In 2006 in New Jersey, this led to the preposterous episode in which Governor Jon Corzine addressed a Trenton rally of thousands of public workers and shouted, "We will fight for a fair contract." He was promising to fight himself.

Thus the collision course with taxpayers. Public unions depend entirely on tax revenues to fund their pay and benefits. They thus have every incentive to elect politicians who favor higher taxes and more government spending. The great expansion of state and local spending followed the rise of public unions.

This is much like the complaints that congresscritters and senators vote for their own raises. There's no accountability on government or union bosses.

The taxpayers are forced to give money to the government. Unions get their money in both dues and salaries from the government. Unions then spend money buying politicians who will grant them political favors in the form of increased wages and better benefits... at the expense of the taxpayer. The unions are accountable to no one, the politicians are accountable to no one after the elections are bought, and the taxpayer has no means to hold anyone accountable... until now.

Basically, that's it. Notice that one group pays in and gets nothing.

It's worthwhile to note that the petulant employees in the Wisconsin are teachers. Teachers who are refusing to teach. Their employers are their students parents - and instead they are going on marches demanding that their students parents pay them more money, even though those same parents are making less money in this recession. And now police unions are supporting them.

The Unions' Real Fight in Wisconsin

From Real Clear Politics:
Public Unions and The Socialist Utopia

Robert Tracinski points out very succinctly that the Unions' current fight is one for their own survival.

The Democratic lawmakers who have gone on the lam in Wisconsin and Indiana-and who knows where else next-are exhibiting a literal fight-or-flight response, the reaction of an animal facing a threat to its very existence.

Why? Because it is a threat to their existence. The battle of Wisconsin is about the viability of the Democratic Party, and more: it is about the viability of the basic social ideal of the left.

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For those unfamiliar with Wisconsin, it's a mostly conservative state, with the notable exception of Madison, the capital. Madison is ultra-liberal. Ultra-liberal to the point that San Franciscans think Madison is liberal.

See that cheese? That's not government cheese.

Madison is an ideal vehicle for lefty idealism. Most of the rest of the state is very conservative, traditional, and responsible. This results in a state government that is supported by producers, and traditional-minded producers don't want to get involved in government, which is viewed as the province of those who don't work. Jokes about government workers are still pretty well acknowledged by traditionalists there.

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In short, public employment is an idealized socialist economy in miniature, including its political aspect: the grateful recipients of government largesse provide money and organizational support to re-elect the politicians who shower them with all of these benefits.

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Tracinski is dead on here. Wisconsin has a very conservative minded populace that has been propping up this leftist scam for decades just due to their own distaste from it. Respectable, hard working people don't get into politics... at least until the Tea Party came along. (Though back in the 90s, there were a few that got out for Perot.)

--

Now the left is panicking as these experiments in American socialism implode.

On the national level, it has become clear that the old-age welfare state of Social Security and Medicare is driving the federal government into permanent trillion-dollar deficits and a ruinous debt load. Even President Obama acknowledged, in his State of the Union address, that these programs are the real drivers of runaway debt-just before he refused to consider any changes to them. You see how hard it is for the Democrats to give up on their utopias.

On the state level, public employment promises the full socialist ideal to a small minority-paid for with tax money looted from a larger, productive private economy. But the socialist utopia of public employment has crossed the Thatcher Line: the point at which, as the Iron Lady used to warn, you run out of other people's money.

The current crisis exposes more than just the financial unsustainability of these programs. It exposes their moral unsustainability. It exposes the fact that the generosity of these welfare-state enclaves can only be sustained by forcing everyone else to perform forced labor to pay for the benefits of a privileged few.

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Those hardworking traditionalists and conservatives throughout the state are the ones being told that they must pay for the Unions, and that the guy working in the cheese factory at $10/hr or making trucks for Oshkosh at $15/hr is the evil oppressor of the teachers union that makes $110K/year and only works 9 months.

Pretty much the case.

The public sector unions are the aristocracy demanding that the peasants keep feeding their insatiable appetite. Take that guy on the end and give him a sign demanding the other three pay him more and that it's so unfair, and that the other three, who actually work, really want to go back to child labor in sweatshops.

Union are and always have been a tool to pit one group of workers against another group of workers. They help no one but the union bosses and goons.

Now even the Democrats are turning against them, though unions are huge financial contributors to political campaigns, and almost exclusively to democrats.