Are Public Unions Necessary?

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Wisconsin is raising hell in its attempts to balance a budget that's heavily weighed down by union-bargained benefits for public employees. Of course, they're taking the "nuke it from orbit" approach and removing collective bargaining rights from public employees.

My question is this: Why do we have collective bargaining for public employees at all? After all, unions grew out of the need for a power capable of balancing that of capital. But there's no real need for that in the public sector, right? Public sector workers are extremely powerful in the political process, "selecting the elected officials with whom they (ultimately) bargain." There's the argument that government, sheltered as it is from immediate consequences and business incentives, is unresponsive to economic realities to begin with - and needing to kowtow to powerful unions only makes that worse. For most jobs, from what I can tell, skills that are valuable in the public sector are equally valuable, or more valuable, in the private sector. Someone who knows, and can enforce regulations is very useful for a company seeking to comply with them. Administrative work is largely similar between corporate and public jobs. So for many public employees there is no real need for unionization - the government's need to compete with the private sector should keep pay and benefits roughly commensurate, but there is some disparity in public employees' favor. FDR, famous backer of unions though he was, opposed public unions as "intolerable."

The counter-argument I've heard is that many fields only offer employment in the public sector (teachers spring to mind). This means that the same dynamic exists as existed between the Company Town bosses and the laborers. There, I can see an argument. But for government construction workers, plumbers, lawyers, and administrative personnel, skills are essentially fungible, and competition with the private sector for those skills should keep compensation competitive.

So what are your thoughts? I'll grant that teachers, social workers, and other gov't-exclusive jobs may need unions. But what about the rest? Why does the DMV clerk have a union membership?

ETA: My state's recent experience with unions in the public sector has been a case study in why they suck. In New Hampshire, our budget was seriously unbalanced (most of our tax base comes from property taxes, and as property values fell, so did gov't revenues), and we needed to cut public services. The unions refused to take job cuts, preferring instead to foist the additional costs off on local government (cities/towns). So we had more employees doing less work. Public services were worse-impacted because the Governor was forced to institute furlough days, rather than simply leaving everything open but with fewer staff members. In the meantime, our court system was forced to cut so deep they had to suspend trials for a month, and they're not even open normal business hours anymore. As a result, the courts are facing constitutional challenges for failure to provide speedy trials.

Comments

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I worked at a private shipyard--in a right to work state (i.e. union participation was voluntary), so you can guess the union was pretty weak. Dues per week were about five dollars. The best paid welders (after 20 years) were making about 14 an hour (nuclear plant qualified for the subs, etc). Meanwhile-- the Ford truck plant across the river, I knew a friend making 25.00 an hour bolting bumpers on trucks, and all kind of perks. UPS drivers made more. Even temp workers at the Busch brewery in Williamsburg made more. But whenever the subject of the weak union at the yard came up, people would raise the "Why should I pay dues for benefits that I'm already getting? Why do they want my money? Screw that!" And as usual, there were comments about minorities in the union (they wanted cushy union jobs to get out of doing hard work!). The reasoning seemed so counter productive to me.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Yeah pretty much. The reasoning goes like this: we have no right to free association and organization. Capital does. Therefore, unions should be illegal, because we don't have the right to free association and organization. I don't get it either, but there it is.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with people being unionized. I just don't see why anyone should be forced to associate with a union.

In your world, I should be able to force you to do business with a corporation.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

The argument is that why should all workers get the benefits that the union fights for if not all workers are members of the union.

Having said that, I agree that closed shops are bad for everyone.