There sure is a lot of talk about it, but little discussion of it. Where is it written that public service employees (formerly known as public servants) have a right to collective bargaining? Regular citizens have rights. Government employees have responsibilities. Do your job and quit yer bitchin’ or get out and get a real job– start your own business. Whatever. Just shut up and go away. We never really needed most of you in those public positions in the first place.
I’m not so sure we should ever allow them to organize. That’s what regular folks do, once in a while, and even then their employers have the right to collectively fire them.
Surely the public servants’ “right” to collective bargaining should come with the right to be collectively fired. Maybe it’s time to grant them the latter, over there in Wisconsin.
Somehow an angry rent-a-mob of Marxist beatniks and global “One Big Union” socialist revolutionaries demanding more goodies from the pockets of taxpayers doesn’t sit right. They’re certainly not what they want to be– equal in principle to civil rights marchers. Not even remotely.
Since they’re pissed off at the state government and trying to stifle the democratic process therein, shouldn’t we be calling them Angry, Anti Government Protestors? I’ll say they’re just exactly the same as Timothy McVeigh. What the hell; they’re incipient terrorists. If it’s good for the goose…
I say fire the lot, eliminate half the positions permanently, and cut all state taxes by half. Tomorrow. That would do for a start. There’d be some breathing room for new start-up business and a rapidly shrinking deficit. I don’t see a down side.
IIRC everyone’s favorite democrap, JFK, gave the unions the power to organize gov workers via exc order. Payoff for Chicago/Ill voter fraud that got him elected probably.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Government has no right to prevent the formation of a union. A union is, theoretically, the combination of free speech, peaceable assembly, and petition of the employer (in the case of government workers) for redress. Wanting to deny somebody their fundamental human rights because you don’t like their exercise is modern liberalism.
The problem isn’t that workers unionize, the problem is bad laws and bad stewards of the public trust. Wisconsin should use every legal means to protect the general welfare – fire and blacklist employees, fire and replace state Senators (and try, convict, and lock them up), re-write bad laws, lawfully renegotiate contracts. Forensic audits, subpoena records, drain the swamp.
Dusty, you’re missing a key distinction. Don’t confuse regular citizens with the government. Collective bargaining is what regular citizens may do. Big difference. Allowing government workers to organize against the taxpayers who are literally forced to pay them, AND against a state government that’s working within the democratic system trying to avoid bankruptcy, is something else altogether. It is antithetical to the very concept of liberty. For that matter, as far as I’m concerned, no one on the government payroll should even be allowed to vote on issues that effect their department funding, such as a school teacher voting on a school bond levy. All they’re doing is voting themselves more confiscated goodies. That’s called piracy anywhere else you find it.
You have the right to choose not to buy from a union shop, for example, but you have no such choice when it comes to politically powerful .gov workers. I’m totally fine with people collectively bargaining in the private sector, but we sure as hell shouldn’t be bailing out the business they’ve run into bankruptcy. Let them succeed or fail in the markets, based on the results of their behavior.
Getting more to the point; our governments have been sticking their noses into far too much for far too long. Most of these position should be eliminated permanently.
If you’re going to say that government employees have the same rights as anyone else, you aren’t quite getting it. That would mean that a senator has every right to stand on the senate floor and promote his private business, or sell ads to promote any business while on the senate floor. The president could be using his media face time to sell Obama beer, etc. It would take about a week and we’d have a total meltdown. ‘Course, we’re getting to that point, hence the problem.
Again; government doesn’t have rights. Properly, it has only responsibilities. Don’t like it? Then it’s easy; get the fuck out and get a real job, like a real person. Start your own school if you’re a teacher who thinks you’re so goddamned valuable to the public. Let’s see you prove it in the free market (if there is one left anymore). Just get your slimy hands out of my wallet and get that tax collector’s gun out of my face, or you’ll find out what it’s like.
I work for the DoD, and some of the engineers are part of a union. But in our case, being federal, the union members can’t strike. So it’s become more of a tool for employees to let management understand what needs to change if they want to stop losing engineers faster than they can hire them.
Unions aren’t always a bad thing…just almost always.
Also, “government” doesn’t have rights. But government employees do have rights, with respect to their management. If you don’t like it, fire the whole DoD then. I don’t have a right to a certain pay for what I do, and lord knows I could make more if I left. There’s a reason we lose people at such a prodigious rate at the shipyard. Most of us do this because we love supporting the Navy. We certainly aren’t doing it because it’s the best paying engineering job. But it’s very satisfying to come in every day and actually produce a product, though I do wish they’d just eliminate every branch of the federal government that doesn’t produce a product (I’m looking at you Depts of Education and Interior).
Lyle,
There is no law preventing senators from advertising on the senate floor, and they are completely immune to prosecution, should they choose to do so. And they do, incessantly (but it isn’t direct-to-consumer advertising).
Saying that government employees don’t have the same rights as everybody else is liberalism. When they say, “keep overseas soldiers from voting because they vote conservative”, it is the same thinking. The criticism that we have to keep the unions (or any group) from organizing against the taxpayer (or any other group) is the exact template used to justify Jim Crow laws (when democrats controlled the South), and is the same template used to justify not letting ‘undesirables’ carry tools for protection in Washington DC, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York City.
The problem is not that governments have positions of trust, the problem is that evil people are in those positions.
The problem with government worker unions is that they get to vote for their own pay raises, regardless of the public trust. A government employee union then becomes powerful enough to dictate policy…NEA sound familiar?
No one working for the government should have the right to decide, even by vote, that they deserve a bigger portion of the pie. Those working for the government should do so STRICTLY at the will of the people. If we can’t get good people in those positions because of the pay, the pay will float upwards until those positions are filled. Instead, we have the exact opposite, people who work for the government, forgetting that they work for us. So what we get are bored, unqualified workers at jobs that they don’t deserve…anyone flown and watched the TSA lately? (I did last weekend, what a joke, and one I won’t repeat anytime in the near future!) Or how about a visit to the DMV to renew your license, or ANY encounter with an IRS employee?
If the states don’t balance their budgets, we will see Egypt, Libya, Iran, etc. in the near future…
If you don’t think so, wait until gas hits $5, and then becomes scarce!!
Let’s edit that:
“The problem with GUN OWNERS is that they get to vote for their own RKBA, regardless of the public trust. A GUN OWNER union then becomes powerful enough to dictate policy…NRA sound familiar?”
If you are willing to mad-lib the same template you hate, then you don’t have the moral high ground.
“Freedom for me but not for thee.”
Dusty,
First, if it was truly equal, one would not be coerced into joining the union as a condition of employment. I have volunteered along with many others for my NRA membership. No one told me, if I don’t, I can’t have a gun.
Secondly public employees are servants. They collectively bargaining for their pay by shutting down the government and preventing the services they are charged with providing. Even the liberal god FDR didn’t think that public servants should be unionized.
Thirdly, unions are not about freedom and liberty. They are about socialism and communism. Unions protect non-performing employees from termination, force wages higher than their fair market value, and redistribute wealth to political allies as the social elites see fit. If it was truly free, you could opt into the union, your employer could fire you for negative performance, and people would be paid based on their performance and worth, not the collective bargain created by threatening to stop work. If you did go on strike, an employer would be free to FIRE your ass for abandoning your job. If you don’t like the pay or conditions, find another job that pays better. No one is holding a gun to your head saying you must work for this company. Companies don’t like employee turnover, it is expensive and costly.
Barron,
In Right To Work states, you opt into a union, if you want to. You don’t have to join the union to work.
Ubu,
Not all states are right to work.
And if you notice, the states who are having the massive issues right now are not right to work. Look at actual production and membership statistics for right to work state vs forced union states.
You’ll note Wisconsin is NOT right to work. I’ll take a non union job any day. If I don’t like it I’ll go some place else.
B
Let’s get some clarity going here:
I have to go with the folks citing the First Amendment.
The people absolutely have the right to peaceably assemble for any darned purpose they see fit.
This does not, however, create any duty for anyone to contract with them. If you’re premise is that you won’t work if I don’t give your friend a raise, you should not act all butthurt when I don’t give your friend a raise, and then fire you for not slacking off on the job.
Freedom of contract, which is a fundamental liberty, got flushed down the toilet with the NLRB and other bits of legislation that required people to support mechanisms of market price manipulation rather than the better options available on an open, free and fair labor market.
The freedom of contract, for both the private employer and the taxpayer, is the central issue at stake here, not the right of Assembly.
Sigh.
Editing hell.
“If you’re premise is that you won’t work if I don’t give your friend a raise, you should not act all butthurt when I don’t give your friend a raise, and then fire you for not slacking off on the job.”
should read:
“If your premise is that you won’t work if I don’t give your friend a raise, you should not act all butthurt when I don’t give your friend a raise, and then fire you for slacking off on the job.”
Sorry.