Articles & Commentary

Articles & Commentary
"A crucial distinction has been lost in the debate over Walker's proposals:

Government unions are not the same thing as private sector unions.

Traditional, private sector unions were born out of an often bloody adversarial relationship between labor and management.
It's been said that during World War I, U.S. soldiers had better odds of surviving on the front lines than miners did in West Virginia coal mines. Mine disasters were frequent; hazardous conditions were the norm.
In 1907, the Monongah mine explosion claimed the lives of 362 West Virginia miners.
Day-to-day life often resembled serfdom, with management controlling vast swaths of the miners' lives.
And before unionization and many New Deal-era reforms, Washington had little power to reform conditions by legislation.
The labor-politician negotiations can't be fair when the unions can put so much money into campaign spending.
Meanwhile, government unions have no such narrative on their side.
Do you recall the Great DMV cave-in of 1959?
How about the travails of second-grade teachers recounted in Upton Sinclair's famous schoolhouse sequel to 'The Jungle'?
No?
Don't feel bad, because no such horror stories exist.

Government workers were making good salaries in 1962 when President Kennedy lifted, by executive order (so much for democracy), the federal ban on government unions.
Civil service regulations and similar laws had guaranteed good working conditions for generations.

The argument for public unionization wasn't moral, economic or intellectual.
It was rankly political."