-By Warner Todd Huston
What happens when a private sector union gets far too many benefits to the point where the business for which its membership works goes under or whose existence is threatened? Punishment. Unions either take a reduction of benefits or pay — or both — and cuts in time or jobs in order to right the ship and keep the business afloat occur. Just like punishment comes to businesses that make bad business decisions, private employee unions also realize punishment for overreach. At the risk of losing the whole enterprise both for unions and owners, the market serves to correct excess.
Unfortunately, there is no such corrective for union overreach for government employees. These unions rarely face any punishment for excess. And therein lies the reason that unions are antithetical to good government.
Of course, we’ve discussed this theme many times here at the blog over the past few years. But to buttress the discussion I’d like to relate some statistics. The Heritage Foundation’s James Sherk recently took a look at the most current reports from labor and found that 12.4% of the American work force is made up of union members. But he notes that, while union membership has fallen to 7.3% of private sector jobs, it has risen to a never before seen 37.6% unionization of government employees — and this number is growing. Government workers now make up 51% of all unionized workers in the USA.
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Unions a Danger to Good Government”
It’s called “pink sheeting,” a practice employed by union bosses to bully their membership to vote the “right” way. The practice consists of forcing employees to reveal deeply personal information about themselves — such as abusive relationships, addictions, or legal trouble — so that these items can be used against the employees at a later date to elicit cooperative behavior.
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Much to his dismay, Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio’s 3rd District has just discovered a new attitude from his voters. Unfortunately, it’s a lesson that congress isn’t likely to learn too quickly. But let’s see if Congressman Turner will.
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