Why I Hate Public Sector Unions

The Economic Collapse talks about unions failing to save American jobs.  I tend to think unions have helped destroy American jobs.
  
I have never belonged to a union and never would so long as I had a choice. Unions might have had some use at some time. In the modern world they are simply a way for the least productive and most worthless workers to get the same wages and benefits as the best and most productive workers. Witness the situation at a Chrysler plant recently where workers dismissed for drinking on the job were reinstated under pressure from their union.

But the stupidity is even more egregious for public sector unions. Let's assume for a moment that unions in the private sector give oppressed workers clout against a ruthless corporate structure -- I don't believe that, but even if it were true -- who is it that the public sector unions are organizing against?  Public sector unions get their wages and benefits from the public treasury, tax money taken from the pocket and bank accounts of other citizens.  Government workers are struggling against "the Man"; they are the Man. 

The teachers' union protects good-for-nothing teachers, giving them money that should go to educate your children. The union pressure creates make-work, money-sponge positions like "middle school media coordinator" for dues-paying union members that require more and more public tax money to support. The unions lobby and support politicians who expand the federal and state education bureaucracy (more dues-paying SEIU members), sucking up more tax dollars and enhancing the reach and power of the unions.

This bureaucracy requires more paperwork and more overhead at your local school. In government, it's the reporting that counts, not the education. There is no "product" in government, only ever-increasing, ever-expanding cancerous growth in the ranks of the bureaucrats. They are the reason we are increasing our unsustainable debt on a daily basis.

And, of course, if you try to stand up against any of this crap, you must hate children and not care about education.  I oppose it because I do care about education.  I don't care if the shop steward can afford the payments on his Escalade.     

Add to that the fact that your tax dollars are providing lucrative pension and healthcare benefits negotiated by the unions for various public employees who retire in their fifties -- living off those pensions for decades. Yes, when the markets were doing well, those pension funds could count on growth to sustain them, but if they can't, the public is often legally required to increase taxes to fund extravagant obligations. Even if you can make the case in a few instances, such as police and firefighters, it is much more difficult to make it for some overpaid bureaucrat in the state capitol or in D.C.

Public sector unions are doing their best to destroy America. Open shops are the least we can do to thwart this effort. I would like to see them mostly abolished.