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Well... Since you asked!

That's honestly only part of the problem. More like a symptom of the larger issue IMO, tip of the iceberg, use whatever clever phrase you like. And you actually did nail it with this part:




IMO, that's not a "plus" that's the whole problem (and the source of the pension issue among others). Basically, unions exist to negotiate with employers on behalf of the workers over any of a number of issues. Workplace safety, pay, benefits, overtime, whatever. Basically, anything which might be a conflict between the employer and the employees can be taken up by the union. The assumption being that a single worker can get pushed around by the boss, but if all the workers are working together, then that can't happen. The union representatives are the means by which the workers "stand together". That way they don't physically have to do so. Their reps do, with the weight of the threat that the whole workforce will take action (a strike) if those representatives are not listened to and their grievances given fair weight.

In the private market this works mostly (there are cases where it doesn't but we can ignore them for now). The power of the workers is weighed against the economic value of their labor in a pretty direct way. They can't demand more money than they're making for the employer for example. If the workers believe that not enough money is being spent, or it's not being spent correctly, they may choose to unionize in order to force the employer to comply. But remember that it only works *if* their belief is correct. If they really are being paid a fair wage, or their workplace really is safe (or as safe as reasonably possible), or wages really are distributed fairly, then the union will eventually fail because the only value the union serves is if there is a gap between what the workers current condition is and what it could be. And in the private market that is always going to be bound by cost.


Public sector unions don't work because there is no cost limit. Technically there is, but no one directly involved feels it (most of the time). Those who act as the "employer" are not directly economically bound by the costs. While they can be on the hook politically, in many cases they will gain more political value by working with the union rather than against them. The normal adversarial relationship is broken. So what happens is that the legislators and bureaucrats who negotiate with the unions have tons of reasons to give the unions what they want and very few to not do so. Unions spend tons of money on political campaigns and in support of legislation they like. So politicians who get on board with that see bright political futures. Those that don't tend to lose the next election as the unions make sure to replace them with someone who will "play ball".


It's a recipe for corruption. It's nearly impossible for it *not* to become corrupt. The very nature of the union itself will cause this in any sort of public situation. Doesn't matter whether those in the union intend for that to happen, it will. And what's worse is that over time, the union itself becomes an institution that is really separate from the workers. Because in public sector unions, the employer is the government, and that employer is negotiating with the union leadership, not the individual workers. And since the government can pass laws, it can basically legislate power to the unions. In the case of WI, they did this by setting up a state level union organization which would negotiate for all unions engaged public sector work. This was by law. You had no choice. If you worked as a public school teacher, your wages were not negotiated by you, or by your own union, but by the state organization. And that organization was far more interested in its own power than in the workers they were supposed to represent.

This is why about half of all public sector employees quit their unions once they were given a chance to do so by the passage of Walker's bill last year. The unions were no longer really representing them. They were representing themselves and using the workers (and gullible people who equate unions to workers rights) for their own ends. That's also why this was such a huge deal. It shows a side of things that the unions and the politicians they work with don't want the public to see or really grasp. They want the public to go on believing that "union==workers", when in reality for some time unions have been as bad (or worse) for the workers as the employers unions were originally formed to protect them from.


That's why unions are a problem. They are *not* good for the workers. They are not good for the taxpayers. They're pretty much only good for themselves.

I hope you're pleased with yourself.

Unless you don't raise taxes or cut pay, but just borrow the money from China.

Kinda proving my point there. During that period in which your mother did not get a raise, and had to take furlough days, you you suppose that the union stopped funding their political operation? Did they stop lobbying? Did they stop funding protests? Did they stop contributing to campaigns? My point is that these unions care more about their political power than the workers that they are supposed to represent. Once they've got the workers like your mom "trapped" in the system, they no longer have to do more than token fighting for them.



No. They're realized that they have more bargaining power *without* a union than with one. Stop assuming that union means better for workers. It doesn't always. It certainly doesn't always mean better for any individual worker.



Unions are still free to negotiate with the direct organizations they work for. And existing contracts did not disappear. All the changes did was give a teachers union the freedom to negotiate directly with the district they work for rather than being stuck having some state level folks negotiate a one-size-fits-all contract.



So basically, if the unions don't have some laws on the books to give them power, they really don't have any? That sounds like a great reason to eliminate them, doesn't it? I mean, they're kinda the ultimate middleman here.

Edited, Jun 8th 2012 11:36am by gbaji

Uh huh. And all that happened *before* Walker took office, right? And maybe even in another state (you didn't say where your mother worked). Why protect and fund an organization which isn't protecting you? Think about it. My argument is that the unions claim to care about the workers, but in practice care more about their own political power. And that power comes more from using union dues to fund political campaigns and causes than it does providing good pay and pensions for the suckersworkers.



Lol! Yay for them, right?



Nice job repeating talking points. I'm struggling to understand what this has to do with public sector unions and collective bargaining though.



Are you in a union? If so, then *you* have no bargaining power because the union took it from you.

If you work in the public sector (union or not), the government compensation system is already structured like that of a union. You knew that going in. And you're always free to quit and find employment elsewhere if it's just too crappy for you. That's your bargaining power btw.

Where you lose bargaining power as an individual is when you become tied down to a pension which requires you to remain working within the union, and when you've been working in an environment that has atrophied your real world skills to the point where you can no longer get a job in the non-union workforce that pays what you can get right now. That's how you get trapped btw.



And? There's a point here somewhere besides you lamenting how little unions do for their workers, while still remaining so active in politics (which I thought was my point). You haven't said if you work for a union though, so I'm not sure what exactly you're complaining about.



So you agree that unions don't really do much for their workers. Great! That's what I've been saying all along. I'll ask again: While this process of steadily declining benefits gained for the workers of unions has been going on, have the unions also reduced the amount of money they spent on political lobbying? Don't you see how the unions don't really care about the workers, but about their own political power?


I just find it funny as hell that I say that the unions don't really help their workers much, but mostly just use them as a revenue source for their political activities, and you attempt to refute that by talking about how little the unions help their workers. Um... That' was my point.



Does it really help though? I'm asking you to challenge that assumption. Can you do that? I mean, somehow magically, millions of workers in the US are employed where unions do not exist, and yet they somehow manage to make good livings doing it. They are generally happier, more productive, and feel like they both contribute to their fields and receive fair compensation for those contributions. At some point, shouldn't the fact that despite these unions existing for multiple decades, their workers appear to constantly be unhappy with everything maybe clue you in that the unions aren't really making their jobs better? They aren't really "helping". Especially in the public sector unions, where it appears that they really do nothing to help at all, but act as a means for politicians to launder public money back into their own re-election coffers.


Seriously. Drop the assumption that unions are good for workers and actually step back and look at what's going on. They aren't good for workers. They use workers for their own ends.