Unions have poured millions of dues payers’ dollars into the campaigns of politicians who pass and preserve laws favoring unions, and who approve public service employee union members’ pay and benefits — especially pensions — that have impoverished municipalities, school districts, counties and states.
The late economist Sylvester Petro observed that, because they are born out of state-backed coercion rather than a mutual exchange, American public service unions eventually face demise triggered by their own corruption. Columnist George F. Will wrote, “Freedom is not the unions’ friend.”
Ironically, President Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat icon and labor ally, described public sector unions as “unthinkable and intolerable.”
“The process of collective bargaining as usually understood cannot be transplanted to public service,” Roosevelt said. “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct or prevent the operations of government until their demands are satisfied.”
Some states have dealt with their labor issues.
Facing a choice between job growth and further economic stagnation, Michigan, widely regarded as the birthplace of the modern labor movement, became a right-to-work state in 2012. Michigan, neighbors Wisconsin and Indiana and, now, 23 other states have eliminated union membership as a condition of employment.
Those three Midwestern “rust belt” states changed their laws in recognition of market realities.
Legislated forced...
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