Earlier this week, Mark Mix, President of National Right to Work, was published in the Washington Examiner warning about the threat the Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill (pdf), which just passed the House last week, poses not only public safety workers’ rights, but also state and community budgets. As we noted before, public officials across the country are waking up to the fact that public sector forced unionism is behind the financial crises in their communities.
From Mark Mix’s commentary:
(I)n the 22 states which prohibit forced union dues for government employees and most of which don’t authorize public-sector union monopoly bargaining, fewer than 30 percent of public workers are unionized. Not one of these 22 states was to be found on last month’s Business Insider’s list of the states “most likely to default.”
Business Insider ranked heavily unionized California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Wisconsin as the worst default risks. And the Hirsch-Macpherson data shows that an average of 61 percent of public-sector employees in these nine states were under union monopoly bargaining — 20 percent higher than the typical state.
In these nine worst default-risk states from 1999 to 2009, aggregate private-sector jobs fell by 4.2 percent, but heavily unionized state and local government jobs increased by 9 percent. Since annual state and local government employee compensation costs nationwide come to $1.1 trillion, or half of all state and local government spending, it’s not hard to see that the Big Labor-driven growth in government payrolls is a fiscal catastrophe for states like California, Illinois, and New Jersey.
…
But government union bosses are expecting to have the last laugh if fed-up taxpayers and their allies limit themselves to going after just bloated public-sector payrolls and unsustainable public pension plans, rather than root of the problem itself.
Laws empowering government union officials to negotiate the contract terms for all front-line employees at a public agency, even for those employees who want nothing to do with the union, are behind the messes in Sacramento, Springfield and Trenton. And laws that authorize the firing of public servants for refusing to pay union dues or fees to an unwanted union make matters even worse.
Long-term solutions to state budget crises will require addressing the core problems of union monopoly bargaining and forced union dues in the public sector.
Until then, hopefully the Senate will spare police officers, firefighters, and EMTs from forced union “representation” that will make budget matters worse for the numerous states that have already rejected it.
Read the entire Washington Examiner guest commentary by Mark Mix here.
