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A Thoughtful but Incomplete Assessment, December 15, 2011
This review is from: Government Unions and the Bankrupting of America (Encounter Broadsides) (Paperback)
Daniel DiSalvo, a pollitical scientist at City University of New York is worried that public employee unions upset the balance of power in a democracy. While the title suggests the topic is about unions bankrupting government, the actual focus of the book is on how unions give undue political power to public servants. The effects of generous retirement benefits and paychecks on state and local budgets are only one part of his argument. It is a thesis worth considering.
In brief, DiSalvo suggests that public employee unions differ from private sector unions in that they have the power to elect their own bosses. This means that the adversarial relationship that characterizes private sector unions and businesses can be replaced by a more cooperative relationship. Moreover, government jobs do not include the same restrictions as private service jobs. If a union demands too much from a private firm, they may raise that firm's costs enough to force it out of business. As a result, unions in the private sector have some limits on what they can ask for. By contrast, in the public sector employees do not have to worry about driving the government out of business, though state and local budgets do provide some limits to their ability to bargain. And the elected officials who approve their contracts do not have to pay out of their own profits: the money comes from taxpayers. Finally, a portion of this money winds up as public service union dues, and is used to fund political activities and candidates who will continue to support the interests of the union. For the most part, DiSalvo argues, these candidates and causes are synonymous with the Democratic Party.
I am in a better position than most to evaluate DiSalvo's claims because I am not only a member of a public service employee's union, but also a representative and active in union business. On the whole, I would say DiSalvo's thesis is accurate, so far as it goes, but "so far as it goes" is in fact the operative phrase here. Yes, unions overwhelmingly support the Democratic party, often without much thought as to whether those policies will benefit the union's members in the long term. A significant subgroup of the National Education Association (NEA) endorsed President Obama in late 2011 before the opposing Republican candidate was even chosen or interviewed to see what his or her proposed education policies would be. Furthermore, unions do have a significant influence on local elections, especially for school board, and unions are often involved in political causes that are not directly related to education; my own union has taken positions that effectively support gerrymandering in California's electoral districts and on access to abortions by teenaged children. Finally, California unions in general have supported individuals to oversee pension funds who make at least some decisions based on what they think is "socially responsible" investing instead of pursuing the best economic return. At a time when pensions are underfunded, this sort of management is irresponsible and comes from the belief that the state government will make up any difference between what the fund earns and what it, by law, must pay out.
But even after listing all the areas in which my own experience within a public service union defends DiSalvo's thesis, I still find his presentation incomplete. In the first instance, the vast majority of time and financial resources in my own union (a teacher's union) is not devoted to any of the above activities. Far more mundane issues dominate. How do we effectively teach when the district orders our schools to remain open (in Decemeber!) when the power is off? How much of an employee's lunch time can an administrator reasonably take to discuss classroom issues? (Answer, preferably not the whole 30 minutes.) Indeed, my union spends more on career development seminars (learning the latest methods for teaching) than politics, and we devote at least some of our budget to social matters: potlucks and small one day trips to Disneyland. This sort of dues use, incidentally, I think, enhances my quality of life more than political actions in any event. Even bargaining issues with the district deal more with professional development (when, where, how much time) and related issues than with pay and benefits. Indeed, pay has gone down each of the last 3 years, and we expect more decreases even as our workload and numbers of students increase. So however effective we may be, our union (in a liberal state nonetheless) is nowhere near as potent as DiSalvo portrays.
In the final analysis then, I think DiSalvo's argument is not so much wrong as incomplete. Unions do far more than just run political campaigns and try to get benefits for their members that exceed what the private sector offers. Much of what they do is in fact entirely appropriate. Nonetheless, I think DiSalvo's thesis contains enough truth to merit some serious discussion. I personally was active in the last school board elections and 3 of the 4 union supported candidates won. Small turnouts in local elections do give unions a lot of power to influence outcomes and people should be aware of that. Better yet, they should become informed about local elections (which often have more impact on their immediate life than federal elections do) and vote. Doing so would help insure that no single organization can effectively decide an election. Beyond that, if unions do not want to face the political backlash that has happened in some states, like Wisconsin, they should consider keeping their politics directly related to their jobs. Education professionals, for example, should not be campaigning on issues that are at best only tangentially related to education. And unions, like everyone else, should be transparent in their political activism. Democracy and limited government are fairly fragile as institutions and any power (unions, large corporations, or even politically motivated "experts") can effectively derail our political system. People should be aware of this point and that is the ultimate value of this book. It will further debate and discussion. Just be aware that the book presents only one perspective, and it is fairly limited in scope.
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