Right On: Public employee unions are enemies of the state

August 30, 2017 Utah Channel 3

OPINION — Public employee unions are driving state and local governments across the country toward bankruptcy and fleecing taxpayers in the process.

How is this happening? Take a look at unions, good, bad and ugly.

The Good

All unions bargain for improved wages, benefits and working conditions for their members. That’s their reason for being.

In their heyday a century ago, private sector unions fought for an increased share of the economic pie. Strikes and violence were common but later in the 20^th century a more equitable balance between workers, management and owners evolved.

Even a hardened capitalist like me will agree that unions played a constructive and important role in expanding economic democracy.

The Bad

In industries with massive capital investments, unions overplayed their hands. Steel, automobile and airline companies can’t service their large debt loads for long when union members walk out. Strikes or the threat of strikes coupled with inept management drove many capital-intensive companies into bankruptcy.

Cutting off their noses to spite their faces, many of these union members lost their jobs and the work ended up overseas.

In recent decades, union leaders have adopted more balanced tactics, recognizing that workers have a vested interest in company success.

Ironically, increasingly fewer workers have decided they need union representation. Private sector union membership peaked at about 35 percent of workers in the 1950s. Today, unions represent only about six percent of private sector workers.

This trend continues unabated. This month workers at a Mississippi Nissan plant rejected representation by the United Auto Workers, or UAW, by a margin of 2-1.

Union leadership corruption surfaced repeatedly over the decades, tarnishing organized labor’s image. Today’s UAW leaders are embroiled in a corruption scandal with a number of them indicted by federal prosecutors, further antagonizing members.

The Ugly

Private sector unions negotiate with management which represents company owners. In contrast, public employee unions negotiate with the very people their massive campaign contributions help elect.

See a conflict of interest here? Who represents taxpayers?

President Franklin Roosevelt, a champion of organized labor, recognized this inherent conflict of interest when he wrote:

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. … The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress.

George Meany as head of labor’s umbrella American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO, in the 1950s thought likewise.

So what changed? The decline of private sector unions left union bosses looking for greener pastures. They found them in liberal states and cities where the incestuous cycle of union political contributions help elect public officials who in turn negotiate egregious wage and benefit increases for those who helped elect them.

Public officials who accept kickbacks for awarding contracts go to jail. Public officials who accept campaign contributions from the public workers they’ve enriched get re-elected.

Numbers tell the tale. Public employee unions made 90 percent of their $62 million in contributions in 2016 to Democratic candidates. They spent from $12 million to $19 million per year lobbying the Obama administration.

George Crowley and Scott Beaulier of George Mason University found that higher public employee union political contributions correlated with higher employee incomes and more public sector employees. Surprised? I didn’t think so.

Public employee unions now represent about 40 percent of workers at all levels of government, with a high of 73 percent in New York to a low of 8 percent in North Carolina. In Utah, public employee unions represent about 17 percent of government workers.

Politicians in Democrat-controlled states quickly discovered that offering public employees exceptionally generous pensions kept employees happy while pushing outlays into the future and out of the public eye. Like any Ponzi scheme, the promises made in decades past are coming due.

Illinois, Connecticut and New Jersey are nearing bankruptcy with ballooning contributions to their public employee pension plans needed. Forty percent of Illinois state education funding goes to teacher pensions. Pension payments in New Jersey doubled over the last two years and will triple over the next five.

Across the country, states are $1.75 trillion behind in funding their public employee pensions. Courts have ruled that these pension commitments are contracts and states can’t reduce benefits.

Fifty-one local government entities, including Detroit, Jefferson County (Birmingham), Alabama, and San Bernardino, California, have filed for bankruptcy since 2010 with employee pensions as major contributors.

The city of El Monte, California, has more than twice as many retirees drawing pensions as it does active employees, many receiving pensions higher than the salaries they drew as employees.

Undoing this incestuous mess isn’t easy. Ask Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Walker proposed to make Wisconsin a right-to-work state where teachers and other public employees were not required to join a union. He endured threats and a recall election but taxpayers and common sense prevailed. Finally given a choice, public employees abandoned unions in droves.

Here in Utah, our state pension plan is about 86 percent funded, better than all but 10 states. Utah has been a right-to-work state since 1955.

I believe public employees have a right to be represented and express their concerns to elected officials. I do not believe they should be allowed to negotiate wages and benefits with those officials.

Have a nice Labor Day weekend!

Howard Sierer is an opinion columnist for St. George News. The opinions stated in this article are his own and may not be representative of St. George News.

Email: hsierer@stgeorgeutah.com

Twitter: @STGnews