In most union negotiations, the boss sits one one side of the table and the workers’ representatives sit on the other.<\/p>\n
They argue, they fume, they threaten, they cajole. Worst case scenario, there are strikes or slow-downs. In the end, a contract is usually hammered out and it’s back to work.<\/p>\n
With public employee unions, there’s one more step in the process. It’s called an election.<\/p>\n
I don’t mean the vote that union members take to choose their leadership. <\/p>\n
I mean real elections, the ones that we use to choose local, state and Federal leaders.<\/p>\n
The Watertown Daily Times reported recently that unions pumped more than $600,000 into the election campaign of Rep. Bill Owens.<\/p>\n
Labor also provides field staff and phone bank workers to the candidates (i.e. the bosses) that they favor.<\/p>\n
And as the Joe Bruno trial revealed, it’s not just Democrats who have intimate, longstanding political and financial relationships with unions.<\/p>\n
This entanglement makes it hard for taxpayers to believe that their interests are being guarded.<\/p>\n
When New York was fat and happy, the massive political influence of labor groups wasn’t so noticeable. Everyone’s boat was rising. <\/p>\n
But now, with private-sector workers losing jobs and benefits, with the state coffers empty, public workers are still demanding (and getting) raises.<\/p>\n
Where’s the money supposed to come from to pick up the tab? No one knows.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, public workers are retiring (sometimes still in their late-40s or 50s) with hefty pensions wildly disproportionate to what their private-sector counterparts can expect<\/p>\n
Those retirement checks will be mailed out, in some cases, for twice the amount of time that the employee actually worked for the government.<\/p>\n
No one wants to return to the pre-union days, when government workers were underpaid or when public jobs were distributed largely as patronage. <\/p>\n
But it’s also unsustainable for public employee workers to emerge as a new privileged class, enjoying income, benefits and job security that their neighbors pay for through taxes but can’t hope to share.<\/p>\n
The best answer is for taxpayers to scrutinize the public employee contracts that their politicians agree to, before they’re signed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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