On Feb. 28, 2011, the Cambridge City Council unanimously resolved:
“We in Cambridge…support the right of workers…from Wisconsin… who are being attacked by right wing fanatics… to organize and collectively bargain…”
On August 16, 1937, one closet right wing fanatic wrote:
“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service…The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations.”
The quote is from a letter by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. So who’s right–the Cambridge City Council or FDR?
American federal employees, unlike some European counterparts, historically do not strike or participate in collective bargaining over salary and health-care, pension or other major benefits. Federal civil service is compensated using a system analogous to that for military service. The federal government, unlike most state and local governments, is not legally required to balance its budget, can print money, and therefore is able to provide relatively high salaries and benefits.
If the federal government were actually forced to balance its budget without currency inflation, thus creating a Wisconsin-like situation nationally, would Roosevelt’s thesis still hold? Or is collective bargaining a basic human right?
The first sentence of the Roosevelt quote assumes that unions exist principally for the benefit of their members. In the unbridled American capitalism of Roosevelt’s youth, employees needed unions to claw basic benefits from the coffers of antagonistic private employers. No one else, particularly not the capitalist-favoring government, was going to help them. Strikes and collective bargaining were essential for success.
Roosevelt’s statement that strikes and collective bargaining cannot be transplanted from the private to the public sector recognizes that public sector employees are employed by the public, not by Newport mansion owners. Their compensation derives from public taxation. Of course public sector employees also pay taxes. But the American private sector still employs five times as many taxpayers as the public sector, while public sector union members now outnumber private sector union members, 7.6 million to 7.1 million. When public sector unions strike or bargain collectively, they harm primarily their fellow citizens, including private sector union members. Their strikes remove public services. Their collective bargaining increases taxes. Contrary to union leaders’ rhetoric, limiting public sector collective bargaining is not “an attack on the middle class.” Roosevelt’s second sentence assumes that government officials cannot fully represent the public (“the employer”). Does this merely acknowledge an unavoidable consequence of representative democracy?
Government officials, whether elected or appointed, are public sector employees. Like all employees, they work partly for their employer and partly for themselves. Actions that government officials take during collective bargaining with public sector unions are inevitably conflicted since both bargaining sides, as public employees, work partly for themselves rather than wholly for the public. This, perhaps unconscious, collusion has significantly increased government deficits.
Are Roosevelt’s assumptions now inoperative, thus making his conclusions now invalid?
Do public sector unions no longer work principally for the benefit of their members? Can government officials now fully represent the public when their own personal interests conflict with the public’s interest?
Public sector union leaders have more interest in their members than in the public as a whole. Why else would they be elected union leaders? This is no different than in private sector unions. But the private sector, unlike the public sector, is governed by, for example, antimonopoly laws supporting competition that benefits the public. If a private employer goes bankrupt, the company employees are hurt but generally the public gains because competition is available. The anticompetitive stance of most public sector unions (e.g. teachers’ unions) and elected or appointed officials (e.g. the Cambridge City Council) cannot be whitewashed by protestations of altruism. If public sector unions bankrupt the government, the public itself is hurt.
Roosevelt pinpointed why collective bargaining by public sector unions is harmful to the public interest. It may be advantageous to current Cambridge City Council members. It is not advantageous to the majority of the citizens of Cambridge.