Unions Try to Force 'Card Check' Through NLRB

Unions may have had their purpose 76 years ago in the private sector when the NLRA was first enacted, but the idea of forced unionization was never compatible with American liberty and freedom of association. The idea that membership in any organization can be compelled because it advances the group's interests is anathema to a free people. The justification for unions in the public sector is even more incompatible with a free society, as FDR tacitly acknowledged. At least private sector unions are chastened by the marketplace. Their demands have to be tempered by the needs of the company to survive and prosper. In the public sector, however, their are no profits, only taxpayers to be milked.

The problem began in earnest when public unions got greedy by getting immersed in the political process. The aim, of course, was to control the political process to ensure that they controlled both sides of the bargaining table by electing politicians sympathetic to their interests. This has resulted in a situation in which public employees have higher salaries and far better benefits than the taxpayers who pay for those salaries and benefits. This, combined with virtual job security for life, means that public sector employees can retire earlier, with bigger pensions and generous health care benefits than private sector workers can only dream of.

I know many small business owners and private sector who never quit working because they don’t have the investments to match the defined benefits pensions that public sector workers get. In effect, those private sector workers get to keep working to fund the pensions of those in the public sector.

In a just world, one would expect elected officials to represent the interests of taxpayers generally, not one self-interested segment of them. This development, and the unholy alliance forged between Democrat politicians and labor unions leaders, left the taxpayers out in the cold. Just a few years ago, we witnessed the spectacle of then Governor John Corzine speaking to a throng of NJ public employees and telling them that he was with them in their fight for better wages and benefits. This was an outrage to the general taxpaying public. He should never have been taking sides. However, Corzine was just expressing what many Democrat politicians advance less publically, but just as destructively to the fiscal health of their states.

Public sector union members, prodded by their leaders who depend on their dues for their lavish salaries, have attempted to portray themselves as the victims in this drama. This is ludicrous. They are more correctly the victimizers than the victims. Most public sector employees are more likely to sit by quietly while their union bosses advance their interests and blithely ignore the broader dynamics of trying to comprehend where those generous salaries and benefits actually come from. But there are many public sector employees (of which I am one, albeit retired) who do appreciate that their salaries ad benefits come from hard-working members of the private sector who often lack those same benefits and, yet, work years more to pay for the benefits they themselves lack.

Public sector unions, by their very nature, also have a vested interest in growing government, a situation that is hardly in the best interest of society generally. Unions correctly calculate that bigger government provides greater potential for higher salary demands, as well as more members, more dues, and greater funds to spend on political campaigns to continue the same vicious cycle. The fiscal problems that have rocked many states, including Wisconsin, are the logical consequence of growing public sector union membership and the influence they have been able to exert over state budgets. It is what happens when self-serving unions forge an unholy alliance with politicians anxious to do their bidding in order to gain and keep political power, and the public interest be damned.

At the heart of the problem, of course, is the ability of unions to compel the payment of dues, a large segment of which to finance the political campaigns of sympathetic Democrat (mostly) politicians. Once they have the ability to pick the pockets of their members, union leaders rarely look back to seek the approval of the membership or, more particularly, of the individual members who may or may not support the candidates preferred by leadership. In the Massachusetts Senate race between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley, fully 50% of union members voted for Brown, but 100% of their dues went to support Coakley. Even union members, when polled, overwhelmingly oppose the forced collection of dues to support political candidates, to say nothing of supporting candidates to which they are personally opposed.

In a larger sense , the labor union agenda is entirely compatible with that of the Democrat Party because both employ coercion to advance their interests. Unions use compulsion to corral members. The Democrat Party uses compulsion and our tax dollars to advance its socialistic agenda, of which Obamacare is just the latest example. They make the perfect bedfellows. The problem is that their agendas are totally incompatible with the Founding Father’s vision of a free America and the conditions which made America the freest and most economically productive and prosperous country in the history of the world. Both would trash the Constitution to advance their selfish interests.

Governor Walker has done a brave and commendable job in standing up for the public interest generally against the selfish interests of public sector unions.

His re-election will ensure that the taxpayers interests are fairly represented in Wisconsin state government and that public sector workers will no longer be forced to support organized labor’s agenda with their forced union dues.

Kenny of CT 12:39PM May 13, 2012