(The following editorial was posted on the Arizona Daily Star website on September 5.)
The star’s view: Unions should be permitted to use political muscle like all special-interest groups.
In recent years, various people have been trying to write the labor movement’s obituary. This is a case of wishful thinking, for while it’s true that organized labor has declined in some industries, it’s equally true that in other sectors – notably among government employees – union membership remains strong.
While many of us would see this as a cause to celebrate on Labor Day, political scientist Terry Moe maintains that public-employee unions are bad for democracy. He suggests voters lobby for legislation that would prohibit collective bargaining by public employees, a position we do not support.
Moe has the kind of credentials that make people pay serious attention when he makes such pronouncements. After all, he’s a political science professor at Stanford University and not some blowhard on talk radio.
The picture Moe paints – of public sector unions as opportunistic leeches that will destroy democracy as we know it – is distorted. This caricature is one that should be of concern to all of us, and especially to those still in the nation’s work force. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Moe notes union membership among government employees grew in the ’60s and ’70s “and has held rock-steady ever since at 37 percent of the governmental work force.”
In itself, that’s an impressive number. However, of that 37 percent, the number of unionized nurses, teachers, police officers and firefighters is often as high as 80 percent. This is a matter of grave concern to Moe, because these unionized workers “have interests in job security and material benefits” and – here’s the real irritant for him – “in higher levels of taxing and spending and in work rules that restrict the prerogatives of management.”
The argument against collective bargaining for public employees is that unionized government workers are a financial burden to all society because their demands lead to increased taxes. Those who adhere to this belief argue as though unionized employees were not part of the general tax-paying public. And even if these critics acknowledge that union members pay taxes like everybody else, the implication must be that the higher the taxes go, the better they like it. This makes them, strangely, both beneficiary and victim.
Setting aside this exercise in voodoo logic, we feel obligated to point out that union contracts result from negotiations between two parties, and rarely does either get everything it wants.
If taxes increase because of the demands of union employees, let us remember that it’s partly because representatives of government, seated across the table, agreed to it, and elected officials of the city or state approved it. This is, we believe, how democracy works.
Since today is Labor Day, let’s consider: When a cancer or heart attack victim is doubled over with excruciating pain and the fire department EMTs arrive with an ambulance, does the patient complain that these rescuers are ripping off the taxpayers?
And how much compensation is just compensation for a cop who literally risks his life every time he makes a routine traffic stop?
How much money do taxpayers want to save on nurses who – as we saw in New Orleans – may be the only health-care providers left in an emergency situation?
This Labor Day, let’s remember that collective bargaining is a useful and legitimate tool, as valuable to democracy as any of our civil rights.