When asked in 1937 if government workers should have bargaining powers, President Franklin D Roosevelt declared:
“Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships 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 public service. . . .
“The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. . . .
“Upon employees in the federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interest and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of government activities. . . .
“A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than the intent on their part to prevent and 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.”
Ignoring that wise advice, President John Kennedy, to reward union supporters, issued an executive order in 1962 permitting collective bargaining in the federal government.
That move opened the floodgates. Public employees throughout the nation demanded and received similar rights.
My hometown, New York City, is an excellent example of the cost of permitting unions.
While Mayor Robert Wagner had signed in March of 1957 an order allowing city employees to join unions, his successor, Mayor John Lindsay, doubled down on Wagner’s decision.
Lindsay signed, in 1967, Executive Order 52 that significantly expanded public union bargaining rights.
The order obligated the city to bargain in good faith with unions on wages that included wage rates, pension, health, and welfare benefits and uniform allowances.
In other words, Lindsay conceded management authority to collective bargaining negotiations to unionized labor.
The abdication of managerial responsibilities and the adoption of the short-run syndrome “buy labor peace now, worry about the costs later,” contributed to the devastating 1970s financial crisis that brought the city to the edge of bankruptcy.
Since that time public sector labor unions have become even more powerful and they have not been bashful about mobilizing their membership and spending millions of union dues to punish at the Ballot Box, politicians who do not bend to their will.
The result: Many “elected officials no longer have effective authority over the operations of government.”
This dilemma is the subject of Philip K. Howard’s new book, “Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions.”
Howard, a best-selling author and noted lawyer, leads the Common Good, a non-partisan coalition that champions simplifying government and restoring individual responsibility.
Public Service, Howard rightly points out, is a public trust.
Hence, every government employee is a fiduciary who is obligated “to put the public’s interest before their own direct or indirect personal interest.”
Sadly, all too often, that is not the case.
For example, when I was executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey back in the 1990s, I quickly learned that neither I nor the director of Public Safety had much control over the day-to-day operations of the PA police force.
A 400-page contract with scores of union rules and entitlements that put the interests of the unions and their membership first, made it difficult to properly supervise the force.
What is needed to fix this situation, Howard argues, is the revival of a professional civil service that holds “public employees should be hired and evaluated on the basis of merit and should be held to ethical standards of loyalty to the public good, not self-interest partisanship.”
This can be achieved by enforcing the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that State and Municipal elected officials maintain all their authority and responsibility to manage their governments.
The “Guarantee Clause in Article IV of the Constitution [which]provides that states must have ‘a Republican Form of Government,’ Howard reasons, requires governing powers to be exercised by officials who are accountable to the voters. Giving governing controls to any ‘favorite class’ is a violation of the Guarantee Clause.”
Elected officials must be free to exercise their independent judgment for the common good.
A government dedicated to the common good does not exist for any particular faction, but for the welfare of all the people.
Privilege of one group does not diminish or exclude privileges of others.
Handing over authority to one group, namely unions, to the exclusion of everyone else, contravenes the common good.
“No one,” Howard concludes, “elected unions to co-run American government. No democratic principle gave legislators and other officials the right to surrender governing powers to unions.
“No ethical value allows public employees, having taken an oath to protect the public, to organize politically to harm the public.
“Democracy under union restraints can’t work as the framers intended. That is why union controls on the operating machinery of government should be ruled unconstitutional.“
The question now: Is there an elected official, with standing, who has the guts to initiate a suit to test Howard’s legal thesis?
Highly doubtful!
George J. Marlin, a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is the author of “The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact,” and “Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy.” Read George J. Marlin’s Reports — More Here.
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