Some governments allow their employees to affiliate as unions. When this is the case, the government agrees to negotiate with the collective concerning the terms and conditions of employment. Other governments do not permit unions or will not deal with them. While the employees may have an unquestioned right to affiliate, no government entity has any legal obligation to recognize them unless a superior level of government mandates such recognition. It is almost universally the option of the government whether or not to deal with its employees in a collectivist form.
When the push for unionization for government employees came to the fore in the 1930s, there was some surprising opposition. Daniel DiSalvo wrote in National Affairs as follows:
Even President Franklin Roosevelt, a friend of private-sector unionism, drew a line when it came to government workers: “Meticulous attention,” the president insisted in 1937, “should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government….The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.” The reason? FDR believed that “[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable.” Roosevelt was hardly alone in holding these views, even among the champions of organized labor. Indeed, the first president of the AFL-CIO, George Meany, believed it was “impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”
The purpose of unions is to redress an imbalance of power where the stronger side is positioned to take unfair advantage of the weaker. Where individuals may be helpless, groups of workers can have the power to compel, usually by withholding essential services from the employer. However garnered, this ability to disrupt or even to terminate the function of the employer is the essence of union strength.
Despite FDR’s reservations about public employee unions, they emerged in the years following WWII. Since then, they have demonstrated time and again that strikes against the government are neither unthinkable nor intolerable. Ronald Reagan’s putdown of the strike by air traffic controllers notwithstanding, public employee unions have thrived and are now a major, if not the major, component of the labor movement. In 2019, according to the Department of Labor Statistics, 33.6 percent of all public employees are unionized compared to only 6.2 percent in the private sector.
The problem with public employee unions is that any government entity inclined to take advantage of an imbalance in power that it holds over its employees will never agree to deal with a union. On the other hand, employees of any government entity which does not intend to treat its employees unfairly do not need a union. Hence, unions of government employees will only exist in situations where they are not needed.
Willie Brown was once the speaker of the California Assembly and twice elected mayor of San Francisco. Since retirement, he has written a weekly column in the San Francisco Chronicle. During a strike of Bay Area Rapid Transit employees a few years back, even so clearly a pro-labor politician as Brown recognized that the BART employees were very well compensated and that they suffered under nothing which could be remotely be considered unfair labor practices. He pointed out to his readers that they were probably significantly better compensated than most of the riders on their trains.
The essence of strong unions in the public sector is a system wherein politicians and organized government employees support each other at the expense of the taxpaying voters. The unions will mostly exist where unionism is strongest. Voters with pro-union proclivities usually do not appreciate the difference between private and public sector unions.
One difference is the difficulty of setting wages where there is no market equivalent. How much should a police officer be paid? The comparable wage is often the neighboring police department. Also, jobs will often vary in subtle ways which can easily be ignored in the bargaining process. A union carpenter in the private sector may have a seemingly high hourly wage but this pay level takes into account the loss of work due to weather, probably no paid vacation time and likely limited health care and retirement benefits. The government-employed union carpenter and his political benefactors will use the hourly union wage from the private sector as a base, then multiply it by 2,040 work hours a year and then add generous vacation and benefits to the package. Unlike the employer in a private sector, the negotiators for the government have nothing of their own at stake. They answer to the elected officials with budgeting power and therein lies the problem.
Only elected officials can protect the tax-paying public from the excesses promulgated by public employee unions. Politicians in unionized jurisdictions, however, count the unions as among their backers, both politically and financially. Given union clout and the money available for political contributions, it is virtually unthinkable for a union-backed legislator to act contrary to the interest of organized labor. It is easier for them to treat the unions generously and raise taxes accordingly.
The real imbalance of power here is not between employee and employer but rather between unions and voters. Union members are profoundly affected by this negotiation process and protect their interests accordingly. Voters, on the other hand, are an amorphous bloc. Individually, each voter is not so profoundly affected by this process, certainly not to the degree that he/she would join a counter force to oppose union interests.
Of course, there is a force capable of protecting the voting taxpayer. That would be a politicians so inclined. Organized political opposition to the public employee power does exist, more so in some areas of the country than others. In areas prone to collective bargaining, however, unions successfully co-opt the process to their benefit. To their detriment, the voters don’t know or don’t care.