George Rebane

Membership in public sector unions keeps growing, while private industry union membership is declining.  The crossover has occurred and public union membership now dominates.  I am among those who strongly believe that public sector unions are a clear and present danger to a democratic republic.  Early 20th century liberals were of the same mind.  Political icons of the Democratic Party like Mayor LaGuardia and FDR “believed fervently in industrial unions. But they believed public employees had a special social obligation and could too easily exploit their monopoly position.” (2feb10 WSJ)

When these obvious truths are voiced today, it elicits a predictable chorus of denouncements from the progressives.  To the rest of us this response illuminates their more deeply held hopes and intentions for the future of our republic.  The WSJ continues –

In private industries, union workers are subject to the vagaries of the marketplace and economic growth. Thus in 2009 10.1% of private union jobs were eliminated, which was more than twice the 4.4% rate of overall private job losses. On the other hand, government unions offer what is close to lifetime job security and benefits, subject only to gross dereliction of duty. Once a city or state's workers are organized by a union, the jobs almost never go away.

Even though Republicans are not immune to union pandering, the relationship of public unions to politics is primarily through the left and its most powerful organ, the Democratic Party.

And as union membership has grown in government, so has union clout in pushing politicians (especially but not solely Democrats) for higher wages and benefits. This is why labor chiefs Andy Stern (SEIU) and Rich Trumka (AFL-CIO) could order Democrats to exempt unions from ObamaCare's tax increase on high-cost health insurance plans. To the extent Democrats have become the party of government, they have become ever more beholden to public unions.

The problem for democracy is that this creates a self-reinforcing cycle of higher spending and taxes. The unions help elect politicians, who repay the unions with more pay and benefits and dues-paying members, who in turn help to re-elect those politicians.

The direct and immediate effect on middle-class taxpayers comes through the unions’ impact on the fiscal solvency of the states.

As we can see from the desperate economic and fiscal woes of California, New Jersey, New York and other states with dominant public unions, this has become a major problem for the U.S. economy and small-d democratic governance. It may be the single biggest problem. The agenda for American political reform needs to include the breaking of public unionism's power to capture an ever-larger share of private income.

(From my mail, the responsive rants from the local left have brought a smile to many a RR reader as I have been attacked for being some lone loony and purveyor of error.  It continues to amaze that so many of us living here are exposed to so little of what goes on in the outside world.)

[Update]  The Union this morning carried an AP piece that says it all for the quality of administration that comes out of government and their legions of faceless bureaucrats.  This report is especially germane to Nevada County’s economic development which many suggest should be based on government handouts and subsidies that are supposed to prop up green jobs.

California officials are lagging so far behind on a stimulus program aimed at helping families boost their home energy savings that the state risks losing $93 million in federal funds, the state’s independent auditor warned Tuesday.

Read the article (here) and then decide on the competency of the public sector union workers that are in this loop.  Their cousins will administer your new healthcare and the cap 'n tax programs.  (I couldn’t find the article’s URL on The Union’s website.)