The Public Policy: Union Confederates
Eggers, William D. & O'Leary, John
"The Public Policy: Union Confederates" by William D. Eggers and John O'Leary Union Confederates john Sweeney's election last October to the presidency of the AFL-CIO marks a major turning point in the history of the...
...It has had a chilling effect on contractors and on competition...
...in 1994, he was re-elected with more than 6o percent of the vote...
...In the private sector, management and labor are on a level playing field because the workforce has to deal with the financial realities of the company...
...The unions describe this as Total Quality Management, in which line-level workers are freed from bureaucratic rules and given more input on how to do their jobs better...
...Like the dinosaurs shortly before they became extinct, public employee unions are large, powerful, and ill-suited for their age...
...Recognizing this, the unions have developed more sophisticated strategies...
...to create safer, less stressful work environments...
...The California Teachers Association was the number one contributor to state political campaigns in 1995, with 96 percent of its $1.4 million going to Democrats...
...come control of the labor movement, and some analysts believe this shift has already begun...
...But in the competitive market, workers improve their situation by serving their customers—in other words, full competition renders the unions largely irrelevant...
...This reads like an attempt to evade competition, not institutionalize it...
...to increase the influence employees have over workplace issues, and enhance the role of the union...
...We will use old-fashioned mass demonstrations...
...to create better jobs with higher skills...
...This constraint isn't present in government...
...San Francisco transit drivers are guaranteed 32 minutes of overtime pay each day...
...French public employee unions were upset over the new government's austerity plan, particularly its goal of reforming the public employee pension system and its privatization program...
...But Engler remained unfazed...
...Despite the massive protests and an approval rating that dipped into the teens, Engler's get-tough approach was supported at the ballot box...
...That threat is leading the unions to try everything they can to derail the growing privatization movement...
...C'mon down, big boy...
...Consider these suggested "goals for labor-management cooperation" as described in an AFL-CIO internal training document: "to improve employment security...
...With the numerical majority will WILLIAM D. EGGERS and JOHN O'LEARY are scholars at the Reason Foundation and authors of Revolution at the Roots: Making Our Government Smaller, Better, and Closer to Home (Free Press...
...The political reaction to Sweeney's election was not surprising...
...He pushed ahead, selling the state accident fund and moving to privatize the state-run liquor distribution system...
...powerful public sector unions are a relatively new phenomenon in America, one that began after John F. Kennedy paid back an election debt to organized labor by issuing a 1961 executive order that gave federal employees the right to collective bargaining...
...John Sweeney and the public unions can protest all they want, but it's hard to argue against economic reality...
...Teacher unions have filed suit against virtually every form of educational privatization, from Milwaukee's voucher program to school management contracts in Baltimore, Hartford, and Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania...
...Not far behind was the National Education Association (NEA), with nearly $2.3 million in contributions...
...Such political muscle can pay off handsomely...
...Well, because it's a threat to our existence...
...In a public monopoly, workers improve their situation through political activism...
...Big Labor depends on Big Government, and the future of Big Government is anything but rosy...
...Their contract allows them to skip up to 16 days a year of work without calling in...
...Newt Gingrich called it "potentially a disaster," adding: "We do not need a more confrontational, more hostile, more divisive union leadership...
...With public faith in government at an apparently all-time low, agitation may in fact backfire on the unions by angering the public even more...
...We're going to do whatever it takes...
...The American Spectator • March 1996 55...
...As head of the SEIU, Sweeney wasn't shy about using guerrilla street theater —like having janitors chain themselves to the doors of office buildings and block traffic on Washington's Roosevelt Bridge...
...When organizations get under attack like we've got right now," said one local union leader, "then they start changing and radicalizing and realizing that they've got to get back to their roots and back to the streets and start fighting again...
...With one stroke Kennedy fundamentally altered the landscape of public employment...
...The discipline of market competition is almost completely absent in negotiations with public sector unions, which do not have to consider the effect of their wage demands on the competitiveness of their employer—the government can always just raise taxes...
...Engler has also made it easier for public-school teachers to opt out of paying union dues...
...As it has a different enemy, the new unionism also wears a different face...
...They rightly point out that such "worker empowerment" has led to productivity increases in the private sector...
...But intimidation doesn't work as well as it used to...
...Such scandalous anecdotes, rare in John Sweeney takes the AFL-CIO public...
...Down from a 1950's peak of almost 40 percent of the total workforce, union membership in the private sector has plummeted to about 10 percent of all non-government workers...
...I'm hoping we can establish greater strength through labor-management partnerships," says the AFL-CIO's Sweeney...
...to increase in-house work and reduce the role of vendors and contractors...
...One of the most destructive things to happen to cities is the corruption of the collective bargaining process," says Chris Carmody, a former senior adviser to Cleveland Mayor Michael White...
...54 March 1996 The American Spectator the private sector, are plentiful in government...
...The mob carried signs that read "Stop the Rape of Our State," and Democratic state representative Pat Gagliardi all but challenged the linebacker-sized governor to a fistfight...
...When the District of Columbia city council brought up the prospect of across-the-board pay cuts and privatization in the spring of 1995, an angry mob of more than loo off-duty police officers and other union members stormed the council chambers...
...If these trends continue, more than half of all union workers will be government employees by early in the next century...
...In the two years since, not a single major service has been contracted out...
...The fact is, neither Sweeney-sweet nor Sweeney-sour is likely to have much impact on the long-term future of American labor...
...When all else fails, the unions pull out one last tactic, a form of pseudo-cooperation called "labor management partnerships...
...Meany and Kirkland were essentially right-wing social democrats, and could never ally themselves with those on the political left who seemed indifferent to the Soviet threat...
...Unfortunately, the law has achieved its intended purpose," says Weld adviser Steven Wilson...
...While serving time on weekends, he continued to work five days a week—as a prison guard...
...But a booming public sector has led to an explosion in public sector unionism...
...But when public officials negotiate with the very constituents who helped them get elected, what often results is the kind of outlandish benefits, job protections, and work rules that characterize grossly inefficient public operations: • Until recently, contracts mandated that it took three public employees to change a light bulb at the Philadelphia airport— a mechanic to remove the light cover, an electrician to change the bulb, and a janitor to sweep up the dust...
...One need only look at the recent general strike that paralyzed France for weeks to get an idea of what Sweeney has in mind...
...Its school custodians earn an average of $57,000 per year...
...He is the first AFL-CIO president from a predominantly public sector union—the Service Employee's International Union (SEIU)—and his election reflects the growing clout of public sector unionism...
...With their growing numbers has come a dramatic growth in public union political influence...
...Sweeney's election represents the transition to a new world of unionism in America," says Rutgers professor Leo Troy, author of The New Unionism in the New Society...
...In the two years prior to the Pacheco law's passage, Weld privatized more than 2o services...
...ever since, public unions have been expanding their influence...
...Sweeney declared, "I admire the French workers for what they're doing...
...But President Clinton congratulated Sweeney as "a forcefor inclusion and activism," and declared that his administration "stands with John and other newly elected officers as we work together in the months and years ahead on issues important to America's working families...
...More than 1,000 state workers gathered outside Michigan Governor John Engler's office in September 1992 after Engler announced a privatization plan...
...Sweeney's great enemy, however, is the growing effort to downsize and privatize government—and his natural allies are the opponents of the Republican revolution...
...In the days of Sweeney's predecessors, George Meany and Lane Kirkland, the union's great enemy was Soviet imperialism...
...In Massachusetts the unions convinced the Democratically-controlled legislature to enact an anti-privatizationlaw, the so-called Pacheco law...
...As Larry Scanlon, executive director of the Civil Service Employee Association, puts it, "Why do unions raise the issue of 'We're against privatization...
...I'm not just readyto fight back," Gagliardi told the crowd, "I'm ready to fight...
...But are the unions interested in boosting productivity, or do they have another agenda...
...Hawaii state worker Ronald Clay was sent to jail after his fourth criminal conviction, but he didn't lose his job...
...New York City spent $185,000 in an unsuccessful 1994 effort to fire a teacher who was in prison for dealing cocaine...
...Even a contract for school janitorial services in California was hauled into court by union lawyers...
...I believe in blocking bridges," says Sweeney, offering a more militant posture than his predecessors...
...A world of public sector unionism...
...The California Professional Firefighters Association and the California State Employees Association also paid their way into the Top Ten...
...Passed over Governor William Weld's veto, the Pacheco law requires potential contractors to compete not against the current cost of a public department but against a theoretical cost estimate of how the public department might operate if it were run efficiently...
...The PAC of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees doled out $2.5 million during the 1994 elections—more than all but one other federal PAC—and roughly 98 percent of it went to Democrats...
...Nearly 40 percent of government workers are represented by unions, and public sector union membership has increased sevenfold since the 1950's...
...THE PUBLIC POLICY by William D. Eggers and John O'Leary Union Confederates john Sweeney's election last October to the presidency of the AFL-CIO marks a major turning point in the history of the American labor movement...
...The situation got so bad that council chairman David Clarke had to call 911...
...As one Sacramento legislator put it, "The public unions own this town because they've bought this town...
...The unions shut down mass transit and other public services, crippling business and forcing President Chirac to capitulate to their demands...
...From Philadelphia to California, the unions have tried to bottle up privatization with legal challenges...
Vol. 29 • March 1996 • No. 3
