As you may have noticed, there is a standoff that has begun in Wisconsin that is now spilling over into other states, essentially regarding the public-employee (aka government) unions. It started when newly-elected Wisconsin governor Scott Walker began moving to enact legislation that would require the Wisconsin public-sector workers, minus the police and firefighters, to begin contributing more to their pension funds and healthcare. They contribute significantly less than their private-sector counterparts currently. In addition, union dues would be made voluntary, and collective-bargaining would be limited to just wages and not the other portion of incomes, benefits.
As a result, the unions revolted. Protesters have flooded the state capital, and the whole issue went national. Now the effect is spilling over into other neighboring states. Initially, the unions bulked at Walker's entire proposal, but then they realized that it would not be good PR to be protesting having to pay more of their pay into pensions and healthcare when they pay less than most private-sector workers, and even with the plan's increases, they will still pay less. So on this, the union catipulated and said they agree with Walker on the pension and healthcare contributions, that their real issue for protesting is what they see as his attempt to end the union's collective-bargaining rights.
What is really at stake here is what is a major source of funding for the Democratic party, perhaps the major source. Most unions in the United States today are government unions, as private-sector unionization has declined enormously over the past few decades. If Walker's legislation passes, this will have likely at least two effects:
1) A major spillover effect into other states, possibly even national
2) The states that it is occurring in are very important swing states and Progressive-leaning states. If the unions lose their ability to be able to act as a major source of funding for the Democrats, it means the Democratic party within these very important states will be at a severe financial disadvantage come election time. This is very problematic as the unions are major sources of organizing the Leftwing voter base.
So what is at stake is to a degree the very future of the Democratic party. It also shows what seems to be a major problem with the Democratic party as well, which is that, in addition to being a party philosophically for large government, the Democratic party seems to have literally become the party of government, as their base consists of government workers. The reason Scott Walker and other governors are tackling this issue is because the public-sector unions in many of the states have developed a very cozy relationship with the state and local governments that has resulted in what are unsustainable pension and healthcare obligations. A prime example of this, albeit private-sector, was General Motors Corporation. Back in the 1960s, when GMC was pretty much the most prosperous company in the world, the executives made very lavish pension and healthcare obligations to the United Auto Workers union. They did not take into account the fact that forty to fifty years down the road, when these pensions and healthcare obligations would be being paid out, that the company might not be so prosperous anymore. This is exactly what happened, and GM's pension and healthcare obligations were completely unsustainable. The same problem tends to apply to government unions as well. Politicians can create lavish pension, benefits, and healthcare packages for government unions because such perks are to be paid out down the road, and the politician usually doesn't care. Their primary concern is getting re-elected. Legislation such as Scott Walker's thus is intended to end the collective-bargaining power of unions for things such as pensions, healthcare, and so forth, and only to preserve it for wages. Wages are short-term. If a politician promises the union higher wages, the impact to the budget is immediate. Whereas if a politician promises lavish pension and healthcare plans, the impact to the budget may not be felt for decades. To make the current pension and healthcare plans more sustainable, the plan requires government employees to cotnribute more of their pay to their pension and healthcare plans, although the end result would be that they still pay less than private-sector workers. And workers would no longer be mandated to pay the union dues.
As a sidenote, I think something that is not being discussed enough is that there is a difference between private-sector and public-sector unions. Private sector unions can be a good force in protecting workers from corporations that force the workers to work in very unsafe conditions or try to overwork the workers or try to renege on promises the company made on their own (such as screwing a worker out of a promised pension after twenty years of work because the company can get away with it). Such unions were especially helpful back in the days prior to labor laws and regulations to ensure a safe workplace. In modern times however, with all of the laws and regulations we have in place today, much of that kind of need for unions is gone. It still applies in certain industries, such as the oil industry I am sure and also mining (there was that company that got caught not adhering to safety regulations for the miners), and probably some other industries.
Where private-sector unions went wrong I think is in how they seek to increase the wages and benefits their workers can get. This is wrong, as the purpose of the business is to make money for the shareholders (the owners of the company). The workers are to be paid what the market decides. Economically, unions are cartels. You have a free-market. In the free-market, businesses compete with each other to offer products and services, the prices of which are decided by market forces, and workers compete with each other to offer their labor and skills to various businesses. Businesses will also compete with one another for workers. This is what controls incomes, which consist of wages and the various benefits. Incomes are the prices of workers to a business. With a union, you have a legalized worker cartel. The workers can artifically drive up the cost of the skills/labor/services they offer. With these cartels, unions often act as if businesses are cows to be milked for everything they can get, and if the business refuses, the workers can try bullying tactics such as a strike. What unions can do to an industry is to drive up the unemployment rate in that industry (and in the overall economy if there are enough unionized companies).
Now if businesses get caught trying to form a cartel, that is blatantly illegal, but it is allowed for workers. Some people, when they hear business, might think "Big Business," but not all businesses are big. What if all the local gas stations decided to try and form a cartel? Are the gas station owners rich? Probably not. Would there be an uproar from the public? Probably! Or if the local auto mechanics all decided to form a cartel? Again, illegal, but it is okay for workers to form cartels (unions).
One thing that also gets me is that the Left like to act as if being pro-union is the same as being pro-worker. It isn't, no moreso than being pro-business is equivalent to being pro-market. Unions hate right-to-work laws because they make it where the person is not mandated to join the union if they work at the company. This is very pro-worker. Originally, it was a national law that was passed that mandated people had to become a member of the union if where they worked was unionized. Then this was undone somewhat when they changed the law to allow states to pass right-to-work laws. The secret ballot vote, removal of which would make it easier to unionize places because how a worker votes is public, is also pro-worker. Mandating workers get to have a say in how the union spends their dues for political issues, is pro-worker. Unions are against all of these.
Historically, unions have supported the minimum wage because it prices cheaper labor out of the market. They have also throughout much of the 20th century been tied in with organized crime and unions have a history of supporting socialism as well.
On government unions, public-sector unions can have a perverse set of incentives compared with private-sector unions. Old-style Democrats such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the NYC mayor Fiorello LaGuardia were against public-sector unions for this reason. Public unions can be a danger in one respect because if they go on strike, they can literally shut down the city/state/country. That is why when JFK signed the legislation allowing public-sector workers to unionize, he exempted major government agencies like the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc...the military also is not unionized (although part of this also may be because organized labor in the 1970s looked into trying to unionize the military and concluded that the way the military is structured, it just wouldn't be workable anyhow).
The other problem is financial: A private-sector union always knows that they have to be careful because if they demand too much, they can kill the company, and if the company dies, so does the union. The management also know this (an exception could be GMC, where back in the 60s, when the management made some very lavish promises to the unions, GM was an incredibly dominant company, so management was a bit careless, and now that GM got into trouble, the government came to its aid). A public-sector union, on the other hand, knows that they can milk the government for as much as possible because the government is not a business; it taxes, and in the end, it can always raise taxes if it runs short of money (which the politicians recognize); the problem, as they are finding out now, is that this has a limit too.
A public-sector union will seek to increase the size of the government because this means more government workers, which means more union members, which means more union dues, more money, more clout and influence, etc...and it perverts the politicians, who end up solely in their pocket. It also means money that should go to things like infrastructure maintenance can end up going to the unions. In seeking to increase government spending via increased wages, benefits, and so forth, along with increasing the size of government to gain more workers, they are also robbing the public treasury in the process. With a private-sector union, the workers one could argue are taking wealth that belongs to the shareholders, but it's still wealth those workers helped to create. With a public-sector union, they are taking wealth that was paid into the treasury via taxes from the private-sector workers who create the wealth.
Public-sector unions also can utilize intimidation tactics of various kinds as well to get their way, such as having massive numbers of workers call in sick, or having large numbers of workers just suddenly walk off the job. There are other tactics as well, in California the unions there really have it refined to an artform from my understanding. I really wonder if public-sector unions should be outlawed completely. In Europe, we see the effects of government unions on the national level. A country can literally be on the financial cliff, but threaten to make the workers start working 40 hours a week instead of 35 hours, or make it where they have to retire at 65 instead of 60, and you can have rioting in the streets.
Maybe public-sector unions are helpful to government workers against abuses in some ways that I am unaware of, but if so, then I think they need to function just to protect the workers from unsafe working conditions, government unnecessarilly reneging on contracts, and so forth. They should not be allowed to artifically drive up wages and benefits. The government has to compete with the private sector for workers, just like the military does. If you want police, firefighters, teachers, and so forth, offer decent pay and benefits and they will come. A union shouldn't be needed for this. If the pay and benefits are too low, there would be a shortage of public-sector workers because no one would go into government work. Or if this argument is too simple due to other variables, limit the powers of public unions to some degree so that they don't end up bankrupting a state and buying so many politicians.
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