From today’s San Francisco Chronicle:
Despite record high membership and dues, and years of unparalleled clout in state capitols, public-sector unions find themselves on the defensive, desperately trying to hold onto past gains in the face of a skeptical press and angry voters. So far has the zeitgeist shifted against them that on one recent weekend, government employees were the butt of a “Saturday Night Live” skit, and the next day, a New York Times Magazine cover article proclaimed “The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand.”
Public unions’ traditional strength – the ability to finance their members’ rising pay and benefits through tax increases – has become a liability. Although private-sector unions always have had to worry that consumers will resist rising prices for their goods, public sector unions have benefited from the fact that taxpayers can’t choose – they are, in effect, “captive consumers.”
At some point, however, voters turn resentful as they sense that:
— They are underwriting, through their taxes, a level of salary and benefits for government employment that is better than what they and their families have.
— Government services, from schools to the Department of Motor Vehicles, are not good enough – not for the citizen individually nor the public generally – to justify the high and escalating cost.
We are at that point.
In California, government-sector unions, once among the most entrenched and powerful labor groups in the country, mainly have themselves to blame. For most of the postwar period, they were a force for progressive change, prospering by winning over public support for their agenda.
In the 1970s and ’80s they backed laws like the Public Records Act and Brown Act to make state and local government more transparent. Because unions enjoyed broad-based political support, efforts to enhance government accountability and responsiveness to voters were seen – correctly – as benefiting the unions and their members. The public interest and public employees’ interests were aligned.
But the unions switched strategies. Although the change was gradual, by the 1990s, California’s government unions had decided that, rather than cultivate voter support for their objectives, they could exert more influence in the Legislature, and in the political process generally, by lavishing campaign contributions on lawmakers. Adopting the tactics of other special-interest groups, government unions paid lip service to democratic principles while excelling at the fundamentally anti-democratic strategy of writing checks to legislators, their election committees and political action committees.
While not illegal (in fact, such contributions are constitutionally protected), the unions’ aggressive spending on candidates put them on the same moral low ground as casino-owning tribes, insurance companies and other special interests that have concluded that the best way to influence the legislative process is to, well, buy it.
Continue reading here. There are two labor movements in this country. Traditional, private-sector unions and the increasingly powerful public sector unions. Their interests are not aligned in any meaningful way, as public sector unions live off the earnings of their private sector brethren as well as other citizens. The only way public sector unions can increase their pay or membership dues is to grow government and increase taxes. Perhaps we can make a grand bargain with private sector unions to curb the power of government workers.
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