The Homa Files

Punch line: Gov’t employee unions collect dues from members … then fund political campaigns … and sponsored officials, when elected, increase members pay & benefits … so that the union can collect  more dues, etc. 

Not exactly a virtuous cysle.

Washington Examiner, In Wisconsin, it’s the unions vs. the people, 02/18/11

Liberals and the White House try to blur the issue by lumping together government unions and labor unions in general.

Obama wrongly calls Walker’s bill “an attack on unions.” It is, at its heart, a measure changing the way the state government procures labor — Walker would end single-source contracts with a politically connected special interests.

Government unions in Wisconsin perfectly match the definition of “special interests”.

Four of the top six Wisconsin contributors to the 2010 elections were labor unions … led by the state’s teachers union and  the Wisconsin chapter of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.

Almost all of the money went to Democrats.

Government employees, as a group, matched the union contributions with most of their money going to Democrats, too.

In the romantic liberal vision of this union uprising, determined workers are standing up to the powerful.

For much of the Left, though, this about protecting the power of labor. But there’s no fat-cat owner wanting to pocket more profits here. The unions’ target in Wisconsin is the taxpayer.

At bottom, this is the unions versus the people.

Even Franklin Roosevelt said, “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

Campaign contributions by government-sector unions, collected through mandatory dues, help elect the public officials who are then supposed to negotiate with them. “The unions sit, in effect, on both sides of the bargaining table.”

When unions overreach in the private sector, they drive their employers out of business, and so unions only flourish under those employers — governments — that can’t go out of business.

While governments won’t go out of business, they are going broke.

So, many taxpayers see the likes of Gov. Walker as a rare grown-up under attack by opportunistic and utterly politicized unions populated by overpaid government workers.

With state budgets in crisis and the Democratic machinery already in all-out campaign mode, war has already been declared — and if the unions win, the people lose.

This entry was posted on February 22, 2011 at 6:50 am and is filed under Budget - Deficit, Unions - UAW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.