Unions have a long history of influence. With Governor Walker's victory in Wisconsin, however, unions have suffered five crushing defeats in eighteen months, leaving many to wonder how powerful are unions in the 21st century?
Opponents of unions point to the dwindling membership rates and overestimated influence of elections as two of the many reasons why unions no longer work. However, one of the aspects that seems to be forgotten is that, when given a choice, government employees will quit their union in large numbers. The experience in five states clearly shows what happens when workers have a choice about union representation.
In Washington State, voters approved a "paycheck protection" law in 1992. The law stated that employees must give annual written consent before unions could collect money for political activity. Before passage, approximately 82 percent of the members of the Washington Education Association contributed to the union's political action committee. After the law's first year of implementation only 11 percent of teachers contributed to the union's political fund.
In 1997, Idaho lawmakers required political committees to get annual written consent from workers before obtaining contributions through automatic payroll deductions. According to news accounts, the number of union members contributing to union political committees dropped by 75 percent.
Similar reduction occurred in Utah in 2001, Indiana in 2005 and finally in Wisconsin in 2011.
While one side of the debate wants to keep unions the same, there are many calling for abolishing unions all together. However, neither of those options will fix the fact that government employees' pay, health care and pension plans are bankrupting state and local governments across America. Instead, governments now have the opportunity to reform unions and help states get on the road to fiscal responsibility.
The first reform that must occur for government unions is giving members' choice. People deserve to choose if they want to join, and if so, which union to join. People also deserve to choose whether to engage in political speech. Currently, public employees covered by a government union must pay dues as a condition of employment, even if they don't want to join the union. Unions also use their mandatory dues collected from employees for political and lobbying activities without the expressed support of the employee. And, public employees are told which union they can join and aren't allowed to associate with other unions. If you allow members to choose if and what type of union they join, then unions can effectively represent the people who actually want their services.
The second reform needed is the ending of state and local government collection of union income. Government unions can have political contributions deducted directly from a worker's paycheck. The state shouldn't be in the business of collecting political funds for special interest groups. In Ysursa v. Pocatello Education Association, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that states can prohibit the collection of union political funds through government payroll systems. Similarly, government unions collect general dues from employees through payroll deductions. No other business or association enjoys the privilege of having the state collect its income from customers. If employees desire a union's services, they'll be willing to pay for it. Get the state and local government out of the business of automatically collecting dues for the unions.
Increasing transparency would also be a beneficial reform for unions. By requiring government unions to disclose financial information to their members, including union officer salaries and itemized income/expenditure reports, public employees would know how their money is being spent. In addition, union negotiations should be opened up to the public.
Lastly, unions should hold re-elections. Once a government union is made the representative of a group of public employees it enjoys near-eternal security. It is very difficult for employees to replace or remove the union if they are dissatisfied. Unions should face the same requirements lawmakers do and earn their position through frequent re-election campaigns.
If reform is not implemented for unions around the nation, then bankruptcy will occur. America cannot afford to maintain the status quo while government pensions drag state budgets further into the red.
I get it, you want our working life to be no different to that in Viet-Nam or the Dominican Republic, but lets remember, that when Unions were much stronger than they are now...the 1950's, our country was a thriving powerhouse.
Funny how the GOP wants to harken back to that time, but they seem to forget that our prosperity included Very strong unions. Funny how we were the most productive country in the world then. I'm sure you would also like to ignore the fact that our incredibly prosperous country had a 70% tax rate on the top earners rather than the effective rate of 14% we have today.
Work for you I am putting my family at risk. So please quit with the poor business man I take all the risk. Pure hogwash.
Once you get hired you can walk away and lose nothing. If I, the owner, gets tired I could lose millions. So, get over yourself and go start something positive so you can risk (really risk) listeing to those that depend on you. Or, are you not that dependable to have 20 or hundreds waiting for thier checks to be signed so they can live in their homes and drive their cars?
So don't tell me you are the only risk taker in tihis situation.
Public Service Unions representing the Government Employee's have an unfair advantage when they are negotiating wage and benefit contracts with the same elected politicians that the same unions helped to elect with campaign contributions from union member’s dues!
The Government Employee's Unions negotiate with the same elected politicians that they financially contributed money (union dues) to in the elections for the union member's requests to take more money from the taxpayers and then give that tax money to the Government Employees!
If the elected politicians do not give the Government Employees as much tax money as their unions ask for, then the Government Employee's Unions will donate union money to other politicians in the next elections who will be more sympathetic to the union compensation demands.
The politician is not forfeiting any of the politician’s money to pay for increased pay and benefits, the politician is giving away the taxpayer's money to help him collect political contributions for his personal political re-election expenses from the Government Employee's Unions.
Private Sector union and non-union employees negotiate with business owners to get more of the business owner's money into the employee’s pockets, and this is OK by me.
How many Government Elite Bureaucrats can the WEALTH CREATING taxpayers afford to support, before the resulting higher taxes drive the businesses and the non-government jobs away to another state or some foreign country?
Step 1) Promise deferred compensation (because that's what pensions are)
Step 2) Don't adequately fund said deferred compensation pool or spend the money on other things
Step 3) Complain you can't afford the compensation you promised
Sounds a little hypocritical to me.
Th theft of the american pension.....read the real story.
Until we have 12 full years of fair taxes, pensions and entitlements should be off the table. If you really want to solve the problem, all corporations should pay into one retirement pool that all employees draw from. They could also do the same thing with health care. As a country you need social services and social workers and some of those jobs require good incentives to attract the best people. As long as you buy into the argument it's pensions and entitlements causing the problem, the GOP have you exactly where they want you.
It's a different day now and constructions unions have got to change.
Instead of pushing up unsupportable salaries, unions should cut the 'corporate' salaries of their executives and align them with those of the lease-paid, have more frequent elections as the article says, and join the movement to promote and force the excision and re-distribution of funds from the rich for public use.
Every state should have a right to work statute until unions can again show they are for the people by changing the salaries of their executives to the level of the lease-paid worker and ending anti-black discrimination. It's a new day. American salaries will have to be readjusted.The rich will have to be forced to kick more money into the pool.
A Union is looking out for the best interest of its members.
Governments are looking out for the public’s interest.
If a Union contract is so debilitating to a Governments bottom line? What did they get in the negotiations’ when they agreed to the contract?
On the flip side, my opinion is that any Government Official may vote for as large a pay raise as they wish, however they may never partake of the increase themselves. All pay raises are for newly elected Officials ONLY! If you are currently in a Governmental position you may only get a pay raise for yourself if the voters approve it.
Who said that ?
There's no real reason for government employees to have a union once legislation has been put in place to make them completely impotent and irrelevant. If a union can't negotiate for wages, work rules or benefits, why would an employee want to pay membership dues? Receiving a newsletter once a month does't make up for all the things unions can no longer do.
The people of the U.S. have been conditioned to despise everything related to unions for the past thirty-plus years. Unions have been cited as the cause for the demise of American manufacturing (although that turned out to be a devastating lie), the bankrupting of states and municipalities (which is questionable, at best), the corruption of the political system (which depends on one's definition, especially with recent Supreme Court decisions), and the downfall of the middle class (which is simply laughable). As union membership declines, wages decline. Is that a coincidence?