amity shlaes: public
unions vs the public - Ruthfully
Yours
Pension
and benefit obligations weigh down our cities. Trash disposal in Chicago costs $231 per
ton, versus $74 in non-union Dallas.
Posted By Ruth King on January 16th, 2015
Miss Shlaes chairs
the board of the Calvin Coolidge Foundation and serves as presidential scholar
at the King’s College in New York City.
‘Which side
are you on?” That was the question posed nearly a century ago in Florence Reece’s song about the bitter war between miners
and coal bosses in Harlan County, Ky. Many Americans, including
Franklin Roosevelt, pondered hard—and then sided with the unions.
Today
Americans have to choose sides again. This time it is not industrial but
public-sector unions that wage war. And this time the unions’ foe is a state or
city government, not a private company. But citizens can’t seem to make up
their minds. Madison, Wis., has been a battleground ever since Gov. Scott
Walker tried to limit the collective-bargaining rights of teachers and other
public-sector employees in 2011. Recently many New Yorkers instinctively
rallied to support Patrick Lynch, the leader of New York City’s police union, when he blamed
City Hall for the recent shooting of two police officers. But the same people
spend other seasons simmering in resentment over the tax burden they must
shoulder to pay for exorbitant retirement packages for the same kind of public
employee.
One reason
for such ambivalence may be that most of us don’t know much more about unions
generally than a few folk-music chords. Unionspeak
features a baffling and tiresome vocabulary that seems designed to deter the
generalist. What exactly is an “agency shop,” a “fair-share provision” or a
“dues check-off”? Without discerning much difference between a public union and
a private one, people default to an emotional response. Policemen—or firemen or
teachers—are underdogs who work hard, and we should support them. Roosevelt liked unions, so we should.
All the more
useful then is “Government Against Itself: Public
Union Power and Its Consequences” by Daniel DiSalvo.
Mr. DiSalvo does take sides, arguing that
“unionization and collective bargaining in state and local government impose
significant costs on society while providing few broadly shared benefits.”
Still, the value in “Government Against Itself” lies
not in the conclusion but in the lucid fashion in which his primer lays out
facts and busts myths.
The facts:
Public-sector unions are not underdogs. Since 2009, membership in unions such
as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the
National Education Association has totaled more than the membership in
traditional private-sector unions. The United Mine Workers, the union that
resulted from the Harlan
County conflict, counts under 50,000 active members, while the NEA boasts 2.5
million.
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2015/01/16/amity-shlaes-public-unions-vs-the-public/