I think we all have the right to collective bargaining. I am a member of the Teacher’s Union in Nebraska. We don’t have the right to strike here, and we have Right to Work laws which I support. We also have a Commission on Industrial relations that handles all this stuff.

I think we are represented well as teachers by our Union because of RTW and the inability to strike. My biggest disagreement to your point is that the public employee should be completely at the mercy of the public (school in my case) administrators, who often times are kooks.

Our local is a community organization, We don’t campaign, and I as president of the local union am able to deal well with our board. So I don’t think it is the local union that is the problem, but the pro-union big government laws.

Generally, public employees have the right to just cause for discipline or dismissal and due process in any adverse employer action on statutory or constitutional grounds. However, you have to pursue remedy through an administrative system that is generally stacked against you and which can take many months to access – while you’re unemployed. Then, after having been unemployed for weeks or months, you have to find a lawyer who’ll represent you on contingency to sue the government for wrongful discharge. In lots of places, you won’t be able to find a lawyer because few of them are willing to risk getting crossthreaded with the government and the ones who don’t fear the government usually aren’t interested in such low dollar cases.

So, having a union contract with its explicit processes and with a grievance procedure that ends in binding arbitration gives an effective remedy for employees subjected to the all too frequently arbitrary and capricious or simply incompetent actions of government supervisors and managers.

Now some of you are saying, well just go work somewhere else. OK, where’s a social worker, cop, or correctional officer going to work? Those are just three of the more obvious jobs that exist only in government. Here is a listing of the job classifications in Alaska’s relatively small government: http://notes5.state.ak.us/wa/position.nsf/JobClassByFirstLtr?open
Now, at the most conservative-thinking level, a person who chose one of those career fields should have understood that the only place s/he could work would be government, government isn’t a good place to work, therefore another career field should be chose. How realistic is that acually? In truth, as governments develop the reputation of being unsatisfying employers, they have to pay people better and treat them better to keep them in the high-skill jobs and in the professions.

Unfortunately, government employment is often an instrument of social policy and is often the employment of last resort. Entry and lower level jobs are heavily regimented and incrementalized because they are often occupied by people with little or no work skills and who would simply be chronically unemployed. Unfortunately for most Americans and for the reputation of public employees, that direct service employee at the front counter is probably incompetent, is never going to be competent, and would be on welfare if they didn’t have that job. Especially in entry level and direct service jobs, governments have essentially eliminated all educational and experiential requirements in order to avoid discrimination suits. Political management, either R or D, simply cannot stand the thought of being accused of discrimination, so supervisors learn quickly that it is not in their interest to try to correct, discipline, or dismiss employees who can assert membership in any protected class. It isn’t the labor laws or the union contracts that keep incompetent employees working, it is the politics of discrimination allegations. Frankly, if you catch the employee standing over the bleeding body with the smoking gun and have it on video tape from three different cameras and that employee is a member of a minority group, it is the supervisor who goes on trial, not the employee.

So, bottom line to WTH’s assertion that no public employees should be unionized, I disagree. The real problem is that the right to unionize and the right to engage in collective political activity are completely incompatible. The federal government has completely gutted the Hatch Act and most states no longer even make a pretense of restricting the political rights of public employees and there is where the real problem lies.

Unionized public employees with the right to act in concert politically as well are nothing more than a European-style socialist labor party. If they don’t get what they want out of one mayor, governor, or President, they just elect another one; that’s what we’re seeing at the National level today.

No public employee should be allowed to engage in ANY political activity beyond voting, speaking as an individual, and individually petitioning the government. No signs, no buttons, no contribution, and no participation in campaigns or campaign activities in any manner linked to their employment. Public employee unions or unions that represent ANY public employees should not be allowed to engage in any political activity, including the operation of a separate PAC; not GOTV, no “member education,” NO activity designed to influence the outcome of any election. Public employee union representatives should only be allowed to petition the government on behalf of an employee or group of employees to be able to administer the labor agreement or to seek approval of a labor agreement from the legislative body. Beyond that, it should be a crime for any public employee representative to solicit anything from any elected or appointed official or to provide anything of value to an elected or appointed official.

This has gotten too long, so some other place and time I’ll explain why public employers like to “furlough” employees rather than lay them off or dismiss them and why unions and public employees hate furloughs.

The money has to come from somewhere! And when the money isn’t there, something has to change (lower salary, fewer benefits, fewer people). What is so hard about this concept?!?

Yes, it’s unfortunate for the person who is furloughed. Life isn’t fair, and it can’t be legislated to be fair despite these attempts. Where is the pick yourself up, dust yourself off mentality? Its certainly not part of any union’s talking points.

I find it appalling that lobbyists spend millions and millions of dollars to seek special favors – while we the people – the ones for whom the government supposedly works – have no voice anymore. This is a system that must be fixed. There’s gonna be a revolution in this country…