Here’s an intriguing thought: Unionism violates American fair play.
Labor unions like to portray collective bargaining as a basic civil liberty, akin to the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion. For a teachers union, collective bargaining means that suppliers of teacher services to all public school systems in a state—or even across states—can collude with regard to acceptable wages, benefits and working conditions. An analogy for business would be for all providers of airline transportation to assemble to fix ticket prices, capacity and so on. From this perspective, collective bargaining on a broad scale is more similar to an antitrust violation than to a civil liberty. [From “Unions vs. the Right to Work” Robt. Barro, WSJ Feb 28, 2011.]
The “union shop” is further un-American. As a condition of employment, one must “join the club.” An analogous situation would be a neighborhood that required membership in—and tithing to—a particular church!
More amusement is provided by Liberal hypocrisy on “sustainability”. They demand energy from the sun and wind under the guise of non-depletion of resources: sustainability. Simultaneously, their appetites for unfunded entitlements and public employee largesse are hopelessly unsustainable.
What does this mean? Under the banner of Idealism, Liberals are just another special interest, demanding endless handouts. At best this is vote buying; at worst it is theft.
Back to unions. Perhaps we need a sequel to On the Waterfront. This Brando classic featured “crooked union bosses using their power and wealth to exploit, oppress and manipulate the workers.”
For the sequel simply change “workers” to “taxpayers”. Let’s call the film On Wisconsin.
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