I have a question and then a couple of points.
Question:
How are public unions "the problem?"
I've heard this a lot but have yet to see how people rationalize this effectively.
FDR characterized the problem effectively. To take it a little further, they assert monopoly power, and they're asserting it within a broader public sector which already has natural monopoly power, and "against" public sector managers who answer to other public sector managers who answer to elected legislatures who then answer to the people that pay all of the former's compensation. And even then, the public generally is not kept well informed of what goes on in collective bargaining. The layers of separation between the voting public and the beneficiaries of overly generous union privileges are too significant for bargaining to occur in good faith. Further, unions spend heavily on elections, using money often taken very sneakily from their members (even though PAC dues are optional, union employees are kept ill-informed about it). So they essentially pay to install their own "opponents" on the other side of the bargaining tables.
Unions are especially problematic in states where security clauses are legal. Union constitutions and bylaws prohibit their members from exercising their rights under the NLRA (such as pushing for a deauthorization vote), and then if anyone tries to exercise their rights in that way, they're accused of subverting the union and thus they may be considered not in good standing and the union can demand the public employer fire the employee for such "offense" as exercising his or her rights under the NLRA to decertify or deauthorize a union.
You do realize that public service employees are there because citizens demand the services they provide, right?
Yes, however that has nothing to do with whether unions should exist.
My sister used to be a Family Services Social Worker in NYC some years ago, when the recommended case load was 15 active cases. She typically had 40 or more. After a while she got burned out trying to meet the unrealistic requirements and decided it was better to be a Heavy Equipment Crane operator. Good pay and significantly less stress if you can believe it. Those offices are still critically understaffed.
The legislature makes the budget and spends on the spending priorities. If society wants changes in what money is spent where, that can happen, and it does. There is no need for a labor cartel to be involved.
Private sector unions used to be able to fight for that, which created that large blue collar middle class we hear so much about declining. Public sector unions simply followed that model and still exist because unlike the private sector which exploited all those nifty Free Trade Agreements to shift industry and labor overseas, Society still needs public services which have to stay locally.
The public sector has natural monopoly power, which provides protection for the union to assert its own coercive monopoly power within the natural monopoly environment of the public sector. You've just pointed to the very problem with public sector unions. There cannot be adequate balance to collective bargaining in the public sector.
So, you need public service, hell...you demand the best service; but as usual you don't want to pay for it.
It doesn't matter that people whine and don't want to pay for anything. That's everywhere. Entitled people everywhere want everything in exchange for paying nothing. Nothing new there. But in the public sector, they do pay for it, they will pay for it, because government says so, and if they don't like it, write their legislator. They can't shop elsewhere. They're forced to pay taxes and utility rates. Required. Natural monopoly power. Government has price-making power in the form of taxes and rates and fees. People have to fork it over. Labor cartels are given privileges to do things that are otherwise illegal pursuant to anti-trust acts, all because Clayton bewilderingly, baselessly and arbitrarily declared labor to somehow not be an article of commerce.
Labor is an article of commerce. Clayton should be repealed and replaced with a modernized anti-trust act that knee-caps monopoly privileges of all kinds, both in the corporate arena (e.g. overly generous copyright, patent, and other laws), as well as says that, in fact yes, labor is too an article of commerce, and cartel behavior with respect to labor is just as illegal as cartel behavior with respect to selling any other thing.
I'm happy to clarify any of the points above. The original purpose, goal and desire of unions was 1) intended for private sector abusers, 2) resolved by laws and regulations, and 3) can be further accomplished by laws and regulations without any continuing need for labor cartels.
