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This story about high school students walking out of class to protest their governor’s proposal to limit collective bargaining with teachers reminded me of a caller to a local radio talk show a few weeks ago.
The show host was discussing unions for government workers. A caller asked, what does that tell us about the government if the government workers have to unionize?
It tells us that they don’t even trust the government. Why should we?
Yet, strangely, these unions tend to support bigger and more powerful government.
The relationship between unions and big government is symbiotic.
Looking at the Wisconsin situation from a slightly different perspective, several things come to mind:
(a) the unionized public sector workers are protesting based on their own self interest. However, if someone else was acting in their own self interest, union types substitute the term “greed” for self interest. Hence what is good for the goose is surely good for the gander and hence the protestors are acting out of greed. Doesn’t sound very pleasant does it?
(b) unionized collective bargaining in the public sector is always framed as bargaining against the government. And when things don’t go the way the union likes, they frame the government, bureaucratic management, or some specific politico as bargaining in bad faith. In reality the collective bargaining public sector union is bargaining against every tax payer. That is, the transfer payment known as tax is the only thing that causes the entity “government” to exist. Hence the union is in essence collective bargaining against YOU. Doesn’t sound very pleasant does it?