Bottom line: Two related articles with a combined chilling effect: Once government gets big (bigger ?), there’s no turning back … especially if the government employees are unionized.
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Excerpted from Washington Times: Largest-ever federal payroll to hit 2.15 million, Feb. 2, 2009
The era of big government has returned with a vengeance, in the form of the largest federal work force in modern history.
The Federal government will grow to 2.15 million employees this year, topping 2 million for the first time since President Clinton declared that “the era of big government is over”.
Most of the increases are on the civilian side, which will grow by 153,000 workers, to 1.43 million people, in fiscal 2010. From 1981 through 2008, the civilian work force remained at about 1.1 million to 1.2 million, with a low of 1.07 million in 1986 and a high of more than 1.2 million in 1993 and in 2008. In 2009, the number jumped to 1.28 million.
“When you talk about big government, you’re talking about a big employer.”
Full article:
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/02/burgeoning-federal-payroll-signals-return-of-big-g/
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Excerpted from WSJ: The Public-Union Ascendancy, Feb. 3, 2010
Unions once saw their main task as negotiating a bigger share of an individual firm’s profits.
Now the movement’s main goal is securing a larger share of the overall private economy’s wealth, which means pitting government employees against middle-class taxpayers.
It’s now official: In 2009 the number of unionized workers who work for the government surpassed those in the private economy for the first time: 51.4% of America’s 15.4 million union members, or about 7.91 million workers, were employed by the government in 2009.
Overall unionism keeps declining, however, with the loss of 771,000 union jobs amid last year’s recession.
In 2009 10.1% of private union jobs were eliminated, which was more than twice the 4.4% rate of overall private job losses.
Only one in eight workers (12.3%) now belongs to a union, with private union employment hitting a record low of 7.2% of all jobs, down from 7.6% in 2008.
In government, by contrast, the union employee share rose to 37.4% from 36.8% the year before.
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“The problem for democracy is that this creates a self-reinforcing cycle of higher spending and taxes. The unions help elect politicians, who repay the unions with more pay and benefits and dues-paying members, who in turn help to re-elect those politicians.”
Full article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703837004575013424060649464.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h
The Homa Files 
February 4, 2010 at 12:55 pm |
And I would assume that the figure of 2.15 million gov’t employees does *not* include contractors.
I’d love to see the combined figure of feds + their contractors to get an idea of the real headcount, since all are essentially feeding at the public trough.
Although the contractors aren’t as pernicious as the unionized feds (as far as their benefits and pension are concerned), they would tend to vote the same way, i.e., for more gov’t spending since that in turn becomes their revenue…and our taxes.