Just Say "No" to Public Unions

Do unionized government employees prefer union representation over civil service laws? If asked, I'm sure they would like to keep both. Unions in the private sector have had a hand in creating the 40-hour work week, elimination of sweat shops, safe working environments, and a multitude other worker benefits that have been codified into law. Good them, good for us. But what have public sector unions provided? Is there a particular good that has come from collective bargaining of public unions with government (local, state, and federal)? How has this collective bargaining been better than civil service and adherence to labor laws?

Let's look at this from another point of view. Private unions use collective bargaining to gain concessions from the profit margin of private companies or corporations. Good for them since every worker should have a better cost-benefit for his/her time spent at work if the profit margin can sustain such an increase. However, when this simple model of collective bargaining is applied to public sector unions, the concessions must come from the government's revenue, since government does not produce a profit. Public sector unions look to increase their cost-benefit for his/her time spent working for the government at the expense of the government revenues. These governmental revenues are based upon a tax base collected from taxpayers, from us. Therefore, public unions look to gain concessions from the taxpayers, through our representatives, of our duly paid taxes, or if there's not enough revenue, the government will issue bonds (take a loan) to meet the obligations.

However, there is one more facet to public unions. Public unions have political clout through the campaign contributions to political candidates. So, public unions, through the political process, elect political leaders that will be on the opposite side of the collective bargaining process. Franklin Roosevelt, George Meany, and many others that are very pro-union did not believe in public unions. A union organizer once said that the beauty of have a public union is that the union gets to elect it's own boss.

Government unions should be busted, but not private unions. Government unions take and do not provide a general good for the work environment while private unions have and shall continue to provide a general good for the work environment. No more Government (public) unions. It's both immoral and irrelevant.