Public+Employees+Unions

Anti-Americanism - Budget - Chicago - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Government - Illinois - Illinois Policy Institute - Illinois State Government - Jobs - Liberals - Pat Brady - Pensions - Public Employees Unions - SEIU - Socialism - State Government - Taxes - Teachers Unions - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Fox News Chicago Digging Deeper on Illinois Pension Mess

March 26, 2010 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

My friend Lennie Jarratt was featured on Fox News Chicago last night. The subject was the $85 billion dollar deficit that the Illinois finds its public employee pensions confronted with. Fox News reports that every Illinois citizen would have to fork over $6,600 to instantly solve the problem. And what has caused this problem? Unions.

Lennie has some great lines in this piece and he’s right on. He is right that education in America has become “legalized theft.” Here are some of his main points:

  • Getting a public sector job is like hitting the lottery
  • The way schools levy is legal theft
  • We have the highest property taxes in the Midwest
  • Nearly all of the top 50 public sector pensions in IL are educators
  • Killing jobs and forcing people to leave the state further cutting state revenue
  • Within 4-6 years most public sector retirees are making more than when working

Illinois isn’t the only state in this union-made morass. Nearly every state in the union is in this mess.
Continue reading “

Fox News Chicago Digging Deeper on Illinois Pension Mess”

Budget - Business - Constitution - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Government - Jobs - Liberals - Public Employees Unions - Socialism - State Government - Taxes - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Cato Study: Unions Violate Freedom

March 23, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Cato Institute has issued its latest Tax and Budget bulletin, this one centered on public-sector unions. The essence of the report is that public employee unions violate freedom, make government more expensive and inefficient, and the incestuous relationship between unions and politicians takes away power from the voters.

While labor unions do play a diminishing role in the private sector, the study points out that they play are playing an increasingly larger role in government these days through their “vigorous lobbying efforts.” I’d add that they are also playing a larger role due to the personal greed of our politicians who are the happy recipients of large amounts of the campaign donations that unions typically provide, as well.

And it’s all bad for government finds Cato. “Collective bargaining is a misguided labor policy,” the report says, “because it violates civil liberties and gives unions excessive power to block needed reforms.”

To fix this evil, Cato recommends that collective bargaining in the public sector be banned.
Continue reading “

Cato Study: Unions Violate Freedom”

Budget - California - Campaign Finance - Communism - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Elections - Free Trade - Government - House of Representatives - Liberals - Lobbyists - Media - Media Bias - Pensions - Public Employees Unions - SEIU - Senate - Socialism - State Government - Taxes - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Unions Top the $1 Billion Club in California Political Spending

March 11, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The California Teachers Association spent $211,849,298 on lobbying and political spending to get its way in California in 2009. Along with the CTA, the Calif. State Council of Service Employees and 13 other organizations spent a total of one billion dollars on political lobbying of the State House at Sacramento. All of these special interests have helped push California to the brink of insolvency.

But, according to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the two unions mentioned above far and away top the spending of the other top lobbying spenders in California. The next closest in spending was the Big Pharma clocking in at $104,912,997 on its political spending with various and sundry Indian casino groups whose spending was in the less than $85,000,000 range.

Commission Chairman Ross Johnson said in a press release, “This tsunami of special interest spending drowns out the voices of average voters and intimidates political opponents and elected officials alike.”
Continue reading “

Unions Top the $1 Billion Club in California Political Spending”

Budget - Capitalism - Communism - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Jobs - Liberals - Pensions - Public Employees Unions - Socialism - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

The Coming Union Pension Plan Collapse

March 8, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

At the blog YidWithLid.blogspot.com Sammy Benoit has posted an interesting piece about the mess befalling so many failing union pension funds across the nation. The post includes a very useful chart that shows the trouble in which some of the largest union pension funds find themselves.

The upshot is that these pensions are on the verge of total collapse which will leave millions of retiring union members and those already retired bereft of the pensions that they had assumed would carry them into their golden years.

The list is extremely scary. This is a disaster for many people. But what is the solution? Naturally the unions are hoping that government is the solution. But the problem with a government bailout is that should a bailout happen the unions will not learn the important lesson that they should learn from the necessary collapse, necessary to reign in their excess. Sadly, many will be hurt by this reigning in of unions, but these same members should never have allowed their unions to get so out of hand in the first place!

So, courtesy of YidWithLid…
Continue reading “

The Coming Union Pension Plan Collapse”

Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Government - Jobs - Liberals - Lobbyists - Media - President - Public Employees Unions - SEIU - Socialism - Taxes - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Gov’t Employees Now Make More Than Private Sector Workers

March 7, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The news we have been warning you about is in. Government workers on average exceed the pay scale of those in private industry. The unsustainable situation is here. It is now clear that Bill Clinton was a bit premature when he said that the “era of big government is over.” Sadly he didn’t count on the era of big Obama to come.

One word explains why this upside down situation has come to fruition: unions.

USA Today is reporting that “the number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession.” The paper finds that workers at the high end of the salary scale are well represented in government. I’d say overly represented.
Continue reading “

Gov’t Employees Now Make More Than Private Sector Workers”

Anti-Americanism - Budget - Business - California - Capitalism - Economy/Finances - Elections - Free Trade - Jobs - Media - Public Employees Unions - State Government - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Public Employees Unions Destroying California

February 21, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Mark Tapscot echoes our current theme here on the blog by reporting that California is once again in a disastrous budget shortfall and one of the biggest reason that this is so is the undue power of the recalcitrant public employees unions. Tapscot says that California cannot get out of its mess because, “the unions refuse to consider relaxing their death grip on California’s rapidly shrinking legion of tax payers.”

Tapscot thinks that California is coming to realize that the unions are going to have to be confronted in order to solve the spiraling budget woes, but I am doubtful. Looking at the mess from the outside would certainly cause one to draw such a conclusion, but inside the legislature at Sacramento one sees no hint that the unions are becoming the bad guys as they should be.

Still, I hope that Tapscot is right and the California can finally lead the country in a good thing by breaking the public employees unions and, hope of hopes, eliminating them.

And why are these unions so dangerous? Tapscot’s conclusion is a refrain we’ve been touting for years.

It’s not only that public sector unions are driving many state and local governments into fiscal insolvency by forcing them to accept contracts providing compensation benefits that far exceed those in the private sector for comparable work and that cannot be paid for without crippling tax increases.

We agree, of course.

Add this report to the mounting number of individuals coming to the same conclusion we came to here on the blog.
Continue reading “

Public Employees Unions Destroying California”

Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Capitalism - Communism - Democracy - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Liberals - Media - Public Employees Unions - Socialism - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Kaus: Unions Are Crippling Obama

February 20, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Lefty website Slate.com’s Mickey Kaus is another one of those left of center folks that are realizing that unions are killing Obama. Of course, I’d go one farther and say that unions are killing America, but Kaus is only worried about helping Obama. Regardless, he’s right that unions are a dangerous impediment.

Kaus finds that the Davis-Bacon wage regulations made a joke of President Obama’s weatherization scheme, a plan that was supposed to bring jobs through his stimulus package. Because of these union-tied wage regulations, the weatherization projects that the stimulus tried to fund were so over priced and took so long to hammer out that few projects have ended up being undertaken. Yet, weatherization projects that have proceeded free of the Davis-Bacon regulations went smoothly.

As a result, the Department of Energy apparently weatherized only 22,000 homes under the program. Another pre-existing program, which doesn’t have to comply with Davis-Bacon, appears to have weatherized about 100,000 homes, if my math is right.

Kaus notes that unions caused this mess as the government spent most of the year trying to figure out how to implement the Davis-Bacon rules. (Kaus’ bold)

Instead, a year was wasted on mindless, union-demanded bureaucratic attempts to disingenuously replicate the labor market. Did Obama not know this would happen when he allowed the stimulus to be Davis-Baconized, or did he not care? [Update–Choice #3: He knows and cares, but is too weak to stand up to the unions.]

In any case, what we see here is yet another lefty that is grasping that unions are bad for us all. Mark this as another in our continuing chronicle proving that unions need to be eliminated.
Continue reading “

Kaus: Unions Are Crippling Obama”

Budget - Business - Chicago - Democrats/Leftists - Illinois - Liberals - Pensions - Public Employees Unions - SEIU - State Government - Taxes - Teachers Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Pension Failure in Illinois Worst in Country

February 19, 2010 by 2 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

According to the Pew Center on the States, Illinois’ public employee’s pension system is in the worst shape of all states. The Associated Press reported that pensions in Illinois are underfunded and over promised.

Illinois was rated the most troubled pension system during the study period, with a 54 percent funding level and a total liability of more than $54 billion.

Proof once again that public employee unions are antithetical to good government. The reasons these pensions are in such poor shape are twofold. One is that they are far, far too generous (fault: unions) and two is that even when the money does go into these accounts the state legislature raids the funds for general usage (fault: politicians). Both reasons are failures of government.

What this state needs to do first thing is to start a two tiered system. Since the pensions are protected by law, we need to accept that we are saddled with current pensions. But any new employee and all employees not yet vested should have their undeserved benefits massively cut.

The state should also look to offer as many buyouts at lower costs as it can. Early retirements might help the bottom line, too.

But taking care that future benefits are not so undeservedly high is the most important thing here.
Continue reading “

Pension Failure in Illinois Worst in Country”

Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Congress - Democracy - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Government - Jobs - Pensions - Public Employees Unions - SEIU - Socialism - Taxes - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

How To Become a Millionaire Easy: Become a Gov’t Worker

February 14, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Having trouble making ends meet? Eating your meals from a dog food can? Lost your job, seen your retirement accounts dwindle or disappear, having a hard time getting work? Millions of Americans are facing these problems. Some, however, aren’t. And those some are government workers, apparently. Unionized government workers at that.

Doug Ross has a very startling post at his website that really brings this home in stark and easy to grasp numbers. Under the rubric of “How’s this for an investment” Ross gives us the following:

You pay a total of $124,000 into your pension plan and, upon retiring at age 49, you receive $3.3 million in pension payments and $500,000 in health care benefits. You receive $3.8 million in total on a $124,000 investment.

You pay a total of $62,000 towards a pension plan and absolutely nothing for health care (medical, dental and vision coverage) over your working career. Upon retirement, you are paid $1.4 million in pension and $215,000 in health care benefits. You receive $1.6 million on a $62,000 investment.

This is what happens when you work for the State of New Jersey as Ross discovered.
Continue reading “

How To Become a Millionaire Easy: Become a Gov’t Worker”

Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Government - Jobs - President - Public Employees Unions - Regulation - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

CNBC Slams Obama’s ‘Unholy Alliance’

February 11, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Well, CNBC’s Media and Technology Editor, Dennis Kneale, is only the latest to jump my little “Unions are Antithetical to Good Government” bandwagon. Kneale slams Obama’s “unholy alliance” with Big Labor and proclaims it a danger to the country. He couldn’t be more right.

Here is the article: “Obama’s Unholy Union-With Unions”

Here are a few choice quotes:

  • It is an unholy union. It’s bad for business, bad for the economy, bad for our country. Worse, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment, this alliance could lead to bigger government at all levels, which will require higher taxes on everyone (not just the top 5 percent of earners, those grossing $155,000 or more, who already pay 60 percent of federal income tax).
  • Let’s be blunt about it: Unions hurt profits, and that hurts stock prices. The typical union salary is 20 percent to 30 percent higher than the pay for a comparable job in a non-union shop, BLS data show.
  • The unions’ expansion into all levels of government already is having a pernicious impact. Today the average government job pays MORE than the average pay in the private sector.
  • On which side of the bargaining table does President Obama sit — with the union workers, in fat government bureaucracies and old ailing industries, who helped him get elected? Or with the Real Majority — the rest of the people he was elected to represent?
  • My fear is that the answer is all too obvious, and it isn’t the right one.

Now if only I could get them all to pinpoint me as the mastermind of this mantra! I couldda been a contender. Ha, ha.
Continue reading “

CNBC Slams Obama’s ‘Unholy Alliance’”

Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Capitalism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Elections - House of Representatives - Jobs - Liberals - Senate - Taxes - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

NLRB Nominee Stymied

February 10, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Two Democrats joined newly seated Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown Tuesday to uphold the Republican-led filibuster against President Obama’s nomination of Craig Becker to head the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The Democrats that joined the filibuster were Blanche Lincoln (D, Ark.) and Ben Nelson (D, Neb.). Both are thought to face losing their seats in the upcoming 2010 elections over the many left-wing votes they’ve recently cast.

The GOP is against the elevation of Becker to the NLRB Chair because his past statements show that he’ll take the position with a Big Labor agenda firmly in mind.

“Mr. Becker’s previous statements strongly indicate that he would take an aggressive personal agenda to the NLRB, and that he would pursue a personal agenda there, rather than that of the administration,” Senator Nelson said.

The final vote was 52-33, falling short of the 60 that Becker needed to sail out of committee and toward an open vote.
Continue reading “

NLRB Nominee Stymied”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Business - Capitalism - Communism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Free Trade - Jobs - Journalism - Media - Media Bias - Newspapers - Pensions - SEIU - Senate - Socialism - Taxes - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

How Media Chooses Words Adds to Bias

February 9, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Politico had a story about Big Labor penned by Jeanne Cummings, the reporter famed for going after Sarah Palin’s Party purchased wardrobe during the 2008 presidential campaign, that was an object lesson in Old Media bias. Her piece headlined “Labor helps kill its own top priority” is a great example of using language to subtly shade the arguments, in this case those of Big Labor, to elicit a positive view of the ideology contained in the issue. Her piece very subtly shades the goals of Big Labor in a positive light easily giving the reader a feeling that Big Labor’s goals are good and noble and is a perfect example of how the media creates emotional appeal for the left’s actions.

Because it is such masterfully crafted example of subtle bias, it deserves to be studied closely.

Cummings Begins her propping up of Big Labor by saying that Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts is “bad news for health care” and will mean that Republicans can “block the Employee Free Choice Act,” and so she immediately casts the possible actions of the GOP in a negative light at the outset. “Bad news for health care”? It is said as if the GOP was against “health care.” It isn’t. And of course “block” is certainly a negative action. In any case, she started by shrouding the GOP in negativity right away.
Continue reading “

How Media Chooses Words Adds to Bias”

Business - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Journalism - Liberals - Media - SEIU - Senate - Taxes - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Dem Senate Hurries To Push Liars and Symps into Power Before Brown Comes to Town

February 4, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

It’s Katie bar the door as the Democrats in the Senate try to push as many liars and Big Labor crooks into positions of power in the Obama Administration as they can before they lose their super majority once Scott Brown of Massachusetts is seated on the 4th of February.

On Monday, the Democrats pushed through the confirmation for Obama’s Solicitor of Labor despite that it has been effectively shown that she lied in her Senate testimony.

Senator Mike Enzi (R, Wyo.) revealed a report that Obama’s appointee as Solicitor of Labor, Patricia Smith, lied several times during her appearance before the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in May of 2009.

Then on Tuesday, the Democrats with their temporary super majority tried to push through Obama’s nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Becker is a union-flack and would become the first lawyer employed by unions to take a position that is supposed to investigate and rule for or against unions with an unbiased hand.
Continue reading “

Dem Senate Hurries To Push Liars and Symps into Power Before Brown Comes to Town”

Anti-Americanism - Business - Capitalism - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Jobs - Liberals - Lobbyists - Pensions - SEIU - Taxes - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Wall Street Journal Echoing The Blog

February 3, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

That’s right, it’s time to do the happy dance. Our drum beat of unions being antithetical to good government has, today, been echoed by the Wall Street Journal in an editorial board piece titled “The Public-Union Ascendancy.”

OK, OK, I am not silly enough to imagine that the WSJ is hanging on every word we here at the blog say — though I was told by John Fund a few months ago when we met in Chicago that he has read a lot of my work — but it is still good to see that we aren’t the only ones thinking along these lines.

The Journal has some interesting states to report on the increase in public sector leeches… um, I mean unions… and makes the salient point that it isn’t good.

The money paragraph sounds like something I’ve written a dozen times:
Continue reading “

Wall Street Journal Echoing The Blog”

Budget - California - Economy/Finances - Government - Jobs - Journalism - Liberals - Media Bias - Pensions - SEIU - State Government - States - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Public Employees Unions Are Sinking California, Part 2

January 27, 2010 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

(Editor’s note: Some of this I posted earlier this month, but this is an expanded version that was just posted by BigJournalism.com, so I thought I’d go ahead and post it here, too.)

Steven Greenhut has an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal about how the evils of public employees unions are destroying California’s budget and economy.

Greenhut begins by noting that with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, California is losing its “productive citizens” to other states but is still saddled with an economy killing surfeit of public employees unions that, “drive costs up and fight to block spending cuts.”

Greenhut goes on to report that the unfunded pensions that California is stuck with has increased by 2,000% in the last decade because of the overweening power of the unions.

Approximately 85% of the state’s 235,000 employees (not including higher education employees) are unionized. As the governor noted during his $83 billion budget roll-out, over the past decade pension costs for public employees increased 2,000%. State revenues increased only 24% over the same period. A Schwarzenegger adviser wrote in the San Jose Mercury News in the past few days that, “This year alone, $3 billion was diverted to pension costs from other programs.” There are now more than 15,000 government retirees statewide who receive pensions that exceed $100,000 a year, according to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.

That is an absurd reality!
Continue reading “

Public Employees Unions Are Sinking California, Part 2″

Business - Chicago - Communism - Cook County - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Elections - Free Trade - Illinois - Jobs - Journalism - Liberals - Newspapers - Pensions - Socialism - State Government - Taxes - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Chgo Trib: Who Will Smack Down the Unions?

January 27, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Dennis Byrne, a columnist with the Chicago Tribune, has a great piece asking the seminal question: what politician will take on the public employees unions?

This is, of course, the question we’ve been asking here for years! Who will stop these union thugs that have bought for themselves a bevy of compliant politicians at the state and federal level who will do their bidding against the best interests of the voters? What politician will step up and cut these thug’s illicit power down for the good of the people?

Seeing as how he is an Illinois columnist, Byrne centers his discussion on the $80 billion shortfall that Illinois’ public pensions are saddled with, but he can just as easily be talking about California, Oregon, Wisconsin, New York or any other state in the Union.

To quantify the $80 billion, Byrne tries to put it in context:
Continue reading “

Chgo Trib: Who Will Smack Down the Unions?”

Budget - Business - Economy/Finances - Jobs - Liberals - Pensions - Socialism - State Government - Taxes - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Union Membership Down Another 10%

January 25, 2010 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

With some ups and downs, unions have been steadily losing members for quite a while and 2009 is no exception. According to the Labor Dept., private-sector unions lost 834,000 members last year.

On Friday, the Labor Department reported private-sector unions lost 834,000 members, bringing membership down to 7.2% of the private-sector work force, from 7.6% the year before. The broader drop in U.S. employment and a small gain by public-sector unions helped keep the total share of union membership flat at 12.3% in 2009. In the early 1980s, unions represented 20% of workers.

The Wall Street Journal also notes that it isn’t likely that the union jobs lost will come back as union jobs if they ever come back at all.

But the Journal doesn’t stress the most important union fact nearly enough. Unions that serve government workers in still on the rise and form the largest section of union workers.
Continue reading “

Union Membership Down Another 10%”

Anti-Americanism - Budget - Business - California - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Health - Jobs - Liberals - Pensions - Society/Culture - State Government - Taxes - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Public Employees Unions Are Sinking California

January 23, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Steven Greenhut has a great piece in the Wall Street Journal about how the evils of public employees unions are destroying California.

Greenhut begins by noting that with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country California is losing its “productive citizens” to other states but is still saddled with an economy killing surfeit of public unions employees that “drive costs up and fight to block spending cuts.”

Greenhut goes on to report that the unfunded pensions that California is stuck with has increased by 2,000% in the last decade because of the overweening power of the unions.
Continue reading “

Public Employees Unions Are Sinking California”

Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Health - Jobs - Liberals - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

…Yet Not ALL Unions Willing to Bend Over for Obamacare Tax Hike

January 11, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Yesterday I posted a story about how the two big public employees unions were looking the other way on Obamacare and helping Obama to pass his socialist take over of our healthcare system even though the plan would hike taxes on their very own members and would devastate their helathcare plans. Well, not all unions are willing to hurt their own membership merely for political reasons.

Of course, in the past we’ve posted stories (here, and here) pointing out that there are the several unions that are not bending over backwards just to hand Obama a political victory and today The New York Post reported on several New York unions that are just as unhappy as those that we’ve previously mentioned.
Continue reading “

…Yet Not ALL Unions Willing to Bend Over for Obamacare Tax Hike”

Capitalism - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Liberals - Socialism - State Government - Taxes - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

The Case Against Public Sector Unions

January 6, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

By now you are all familiar with my beating on my little unions-are-bad-for-government drum… ya may even be tired of it by now. Still, I’d like to pass on the work of friend to the blog David Denholm who has also addressed this point in the past.

On the Public Service Research Foundation website can be found Denholm’s excellent article titled, “The Case Against Public Sector Unionism and Collective Bargaining.” In it you’ll find some great points and a thorough discussion on the evils that is a unionized government workforce.

One of the best insights that Denholm has is that a unionized government workforce eliminates the democratic right of the voters to affect their government. (download pdf copy)

By making the union a full and equal partner at the bargaining table, compulsory public-sector bargaining laws deprive the public of its right to participate in policy making. This point was emphasized in a U.S. District Court opinion which upheld the constitutionality of a North Carolina law declaring public-sector union contracts to be void. The Court said:

Moreover, to the extent that public employees gain power through recognition and collective bargaining, other interest groups with a right to a voice in the running of the government may be left out of vital political decisions. Thus the granting of collective bargaining rights to public employees involves important matters fundamental to our democratic form of government. The setting of goals and making policy decisions are rights inuring to each citizen. All citizens have the right to associate in groups to advocate their special interests to the government. It is something entirely different to grant any one interest group special status and access to the decision-making process.

This reflects my own points made so very often right here on the blog. The incestuous relationship between union — that becomes a patron of politicians — and politicians — that return that patronage — wholly cuts out the voter’s ability to direct government to their desires and needs.

Anyway, Denholm makes some great points and his piece is well worth the read.
Continue reading “

The Case Against Public Sector Unions”

Business - California - Capitalism - Communism - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Free Trade - Freedom - GOP - Liberals - Republicans - SEIU - Society/Culture - State Government - Taxes - The Law - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Once Again Unions Find a Pliant Judge to do Their Bidding

January 5, 2010 by 4 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

In another example of why unions are antithetical to good government, a pliant, left-wing judge in California has ruled that the Schwarzenegger Administration cannot furlough state workers that belong to three powerful public employees unions.

Governor Schwarzenegger has been battling to cut his over spent state budget for several years now and one of the solutions to the problem that he lit upon was the idea that he might furlough his workforce. He would give these workers a few days a month off without pay and this would save the taxpayer’s millions. It is a good idea and one that real-world businesses are forced to employ all the time when things get tough.

But here come the state unions to prevent this simple cost saving measure even though it is common as dirt in the real-world sector.
Continue reading “

Once Again Unions Find a Pliant Judge to do Their Bidding”

Budget - Business - Capitalism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Elections - Free Trade - Freedom - House of Representatives - Jobs - Liberals - Senate - Socialism - Society/Culture - State Government - Taxes - The Law - Warner Todd Huston

Unions a Danger to Good Government

December 1, 2009 by

-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.
Continue reading “

Unions a Danger to Good Government”