Public Unions vs. the People

A new book argues that government unions have seized unaccountable power. The author, Philip Howard, plans to make the case in court.

By Mene Ukueberuwa of The WSJ (2023). Excerpts:

"This week the New York transit union gave an example for the ages. It blocked the subway system’s plan to sync its schedule to new ridership norms, with fewer trains on slow days and lightly traveled routes and more trains on busy ones. The change would have saved $1.5 million a year, benefited riders and preserved workers’ paid hours. But an arbitrator shelved it Tuesday because the union couldn’t bear the “variations in start and end times.”

“They’re not just inefficient,” Mr. Howard says of the unions. “They’re designed for inefficiency.”

“They’re designed to require a new work crew to come cut a tree limb because the people fixing the rails don’t have authority to remove a tree limb. They’re designed to prevent supervisors from observing teachers, except under very controlled circumstances. They’re designed to prevent the principal from giving extra training to a teacher. They’re designed to prevent a supervisor in an agency from going and talking to a worker and soliciting ideas about how to make things work better.”"

"his new book, “Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions.”"

"“Teddy Roosevelt, an original civil-service reformer, created a policy that basically said we’ll guard public employees against political firing, but we are not going to give them anything that looks like tenure.” That’s a reference to guidance Roosevelt issued in 1902 mandating that no labor rules could impede the firing of federal workers.

The next President Roosevelt held the line decades later. “FDR was firmly against public unions,” Mr. Howard says. “He understood that there was an inherent conflict of interest in public employees bargaining against government. They’re supposed to be working for the people, not getting more out of them.” That’s why two years after FDR blessed private unions by signing the National Labor Relations Act, he forbade public unions with equal fervor. “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” he wrote in 1937."

"If a private union asks for inefficient work rules, the company will go out of business or move to another place and they will lose their jobs. But government can’t move.”"

"other interest groups don’t have the legal authority of collective bargaining, which creates this huge interest group that political leaders have to satisfy in creating a contract,” he says. No one can force a governor to subsidize this or that industry like he promised on the campaign trail. But if he can’t meet the teachers union halfway on their demands, an arbitrator steps in to impose a settlement."

"other interest groups are looking for a favor—a tax break, a subsidy. But the public unions are looking to exercise control over the entire operating machinery of government."

"teachers unions often spend more on state elections than all business groups combined. Those funds go to Democrats by a factor of about 19 to 1."

"Governors in the Midwest and on the coasts didn’t put up a fight. Twenty states opened the door to public unions by 1968.In less than a half-century, many of these states have stacked liabilities that they’ll never escape. In Illinois a 2021 Moody’s study found that it would cost an extra $65,000 from every household to cover unfunded pension commitments."