Ruling: Calif. City Can Void Union Contracts in Bankruptcy

-By Warner Todd Huston

Maybe the gravy train is finally beginning to grind to a halt at long last? Maybe the thievery by unions that is bankrupting governments all across the nation is starting to show signs of abating? If this court ruling in Vallejo, California is any indication, we just might be starting to see some common sense at last endangering the practice of heaping undeserved and unsustainable union benefits on government workers.

On March 13 U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael McManus held that union contracts “negotiated” by city worker’s unions can be voided by Vallejo if the city enters into bankruptcy proceedings. The judge said that city workers do not have the same protections that Congress bestowed upon union workers in private companies and that as public workers they cannot expect their full contracts to be forcibly upheld by courts during bankruptcy.

This is astonishingly good news for anyone interested in good government. For decades unions have heaped larger and more generous benefits and health coverage upon themselves with the willing participation of campaign cash grubbing politicians that have acquiesced to every demand, sustainable or not. Government worker unions give far and away better benefits to members than are seen anywhere in the private sector. And with political abandon it has been the inmates running the asylum for a long time.

We’ve seen a cynical and parasitic relationship as politicians and unions suck off the citizenry returning nothing but diseased government and a shriveled host. These excessive and unearned benefits are not only unsustainable, but are paid out of our taxes. That government workers do not produce anything is undeniable. They are a 100% drag on the citizenry and return absolutely nothing to the community. We all know that often their jobs are a result of knowing someone in government and not at all merit based. As the saying goes, there is nothing so permanent as a government policy/job/regulation/tax — all these things seem to live like the Frankenstein Monster, neither alive, nor dead, but always terrorizing the citizens. Worse yet, these monsters are made of other people’s best parts all the while adding nothing worth while to society. Unions have bloated themselves off of government like ticks, growing fat and happy with no effort and it’s about time these leeches were cut out of the body politic.

Let us hope that this ruling is upheld and cities can breathe a little easier as they try to cut back on bloated government spending and reorganize. These placemen and donothings deserve no sympathy. Let them get a real job.

Let us hope that this is the first step to the ideal situation of disbanding government unions altogether. They are antithetical to good government in any case. A union’s job is to get away with as much as possible for the worker, of course. A union’s concern is never the job, the product, or the health of the company. But in government WE are the employer. And government is there to serve we the people. This means that a government worker union’s main goal is to rip off the people! Their job is to steal our taxes and denude government of resources for all of us!

Hopefully this ruling is the first step on the long road to undercutting union thievery of government resources nationwide. It’s about time.

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, Human Events Magazine, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston

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