George Rebane
This is the first Labor Day in which we celebrate/mourn that membership in public service employee unions now exceeds that in the private sector. The Heritage Foundation reports here that –
Collective bargaining, the anti-trust exemption at the heart the labor movement’s power, was created to help workers seize their “fair share” of business profits. But if a union ends up extracting a contract from a private firm that eats up too much of the profits, then that firm will be unable to reinvest those resources and will lose out to competitors. But when a union extracts a generous contract from a government, there is no check on that spending. Instead of being forced out by more efficient competitors, the government just raises taxes.
The shift from private to public sector has fundamentally changed organized labor’s priorities. Unions used to support policies that would help their private sector employers grow. But now that they are largely dependent on the government, the only growth that unions are interested in is the growth of government. So unions push for tax increases across the country.
Public service labor unions across the world continue to flex their muscles and cow governments in their demand for greater benefits and resistance to cost cutting in countries they have driven onto fiscal shoals. Their oft demonstrated message is simple, ‘Pay us more, or we’ll shut you down.’ In America politicians and public service unions learned long how to do-si-do so that they can together pilfer our wallets while seemingly keeping the peace. But that idyll will soon come to an end.
Now go have a brew, put another shrimp on the barbie, and don’t think about it.
